Divinity Road

by Martin Pevsner

  A week has passed since Semira’s arrival. She spends her lunchbreak giving individual tutorials, an extended trouble-shooting session that she timetables in once a week, an opportunity for her students to bring her their problems. Today one student is uncertain how to get a place for his daughter at primary school. Nuala drafts a job reference for another, helps a third one to fill in her passport application form, a fourth to obtain a free bus pass. She helps decipher a court summons letter, refers a young girl for counselling, runs through the procedure for claiming back income tax. One student asks her how she can apply to a British university, another how to deal with council tax.

  Nuala’s not timetabled to teach that afternoon but she’s agreed to accompany one of her students to the town hall for her daughter’s local education authority appeal hearing. Having endured months of bullying by a gang in her school including a night attack on her home, the daughter has refused to return to class and so they have applied for a transfer to another school further from her home. The new school has refused and they have appealed.

  Nuala has helped her student fill in the appeal paperwork. She feels nervous before the meeting but at the hearing it becomes clear that those adjudicating have read the daughter’s account, are sympathetic, and that the onus is clearly on the school representative to justify the refusal rather than for her student to plead her case.

  The wait in the reception area takes longer than the appeal itself, and when they emerge, triumphant, twenty-five minutes later, Nuala’s student invites her for a celebratory coffee. They find a small café and eat sticky cakes with their cappuccinos.

  The student’s daughter is no weak-willed wall flower, she’s feisty and sassy and droll – not at all how Nuala had expected. Nuala can see how her strength might well have infuriated a bully. She’s a natural mimic, providing cutting impersonations of the appeal panel members, the school representative and her own mother, and she keeps the two adults amused as they finish their snack. Back at home Nuala finds Semira, Yanit and Abebe absent – some meeting or class at the mosque, she recalls – and her own children in front of the television.

  As she’d arranged the previous day, her neighbour Joan is watching the children. She’s a sprightly octogenarian, a pumpkin face, wiry close-curled hair, a generous smile revealing the stumps of her few remaining teeth. Resident of the street for over fifty years, to Nuala she’s as much a fixture as the postbox on the corner. Nuala knows something of her past, that she’s watched her husband succumb to cancer and her children grow up and move out – one to Australia, one to Canada, the third to the Potteries. In the absence of blood relations she has adopted many of the other residents, including Nuala and her offspring, as family.

  Nuala has mixed, mostly positive feelings for Joan. She’s warm and caring though displays an odd quirk, a penchant for the non sequitur and an ability to generate her own logic, which can be endearing or hilarious or infuriating depending on the circumstances.

  Joan often talks about the old people’s home in Headington where she worked for forty years. Nuala knows that they allowed her to continue working until well into her seventies, and even after her retirement she has continued to return there once or twice a week to visit the residents, as much for her own benefit as for theirs, Nuala believes.

  Hello, dear, she begins when she sees Nuala. Your phone’s just rung but it’s one of them cordless ones, so I didn’t touch it.

  That’s OK, Joan. Will you have a cup of tea?

  No thanks, dear. I had one earlier. The kids have had a snack.

  How are the legs?

  Joan’s health has taken a turn for the worse recently after a decade of relative stability. Despite their tree-trunk appearance, both her legs are frail and her latest problem involves the left one. In addition, both ankles are permanently swollen and she has never fully recovered from a hip injury following a fall on the icy pavement the previous winter. Nuala’s unclear about the precise details of the on-going problem – Joan’s always vague about her doctor’s diagnoses – but she knows it involves tablets as she went herself to collect the prescription for Joan the previous day.

  Nuala sticks her head into the lounge, notes that Beth and Sammy are installed in front of the television, and, with a sigh, that the snack consisted of a two-litre bottle of cola, a family pack of crisps and an assortment of sweets. They’ll be buzzing all night, she thinks.

  ... he’s very good at football, too. Plays for the county.

  Nuala realises that Joan’s been talking, that she’s not been listening. This inability to concentrate has been a bane since Greg’s disappearance, a kind of delayed symptom of the shock. She wonders who Joan is talking about and decides it’s probably a neighbour’s son, another of her adopted ‘grandchildren’.

  ... mind you, he’s very cocky, is that one. He’s always poking his sister, sets her off screaming. And she’s got a terrible scream. Ooh, it goes right through you. You know, she’s coloured, she is, so it goes right through you. She’s got that, what’s it called... celebrity palsy. Her brain stopped working for a bit when she was born...

  Mm, says Nuala, distracted. The story of the cocky boy has reminded her that she was supposed to chase up one of her students, a young Kurd, seventeen years old, who has been absent from college for over a week. She has been leaving voicemail messages on his mobile for the past four days without success, but has been told by another student, the Kurd’s friend, that he is on holiday.

  According to the classmate, two or three times a year the boy gets itchy feet and decides to do see his many scattered friends. He’ll head for Glasgow, Sunderland, Leeds, Sheffield. When caught out in between his friends’ homes, his modus operandi is to head for the nearest police station, show them his Home Office documentation, tell them he’s penniless and under eighteen and throw himself at their mercy. Invariably he gets offered a hot meal and a cell for the night. In this way he’s been all over the country without paying for a bed. His friend has provided Nuala with a new mobile number, but she’s unsure what she’ll say when she tracks him down, whether to reprimand him for missing classes or congratulate him on his ingenuity.

  ... and I had to ring three times to get someone to take her to the toilet, Joan is telling her. And you should have seen the state of the room. We used to get down on our knees and scrub the skirting boards. Now it’s all sub-contracted out, they just give it a quick once over. It went downhill when they got rid of the matrons...

  Mmm, says Nuala. She wonders whether there’s any point cooking for her kids, realises she’ll have to organise something for Semira and the others anyway, opens the fridge door to check what the possibilities are.

  ... when I saw them in Lidl. Ooh he’s a horrible man. The way he talks to her. ‘Do this!’, ‘Stand over there!’ It’s not right.

  Nuala tuts in sympathy. Bolognese, she thinks. That’s nice and easy. She busies herself with onions, tomato puree, mince, garlic.

  ... Market Rasen, I think. Or Musselburgh. Worth an each way flutter, that’s what he said...

  Nuala’s slicing onions now. She waits for an appropriate pause in Joan’s monologue.

  You’ll stay for tea, won’t you, Joan? she says. She’s seen Joan’s bare kitchen and wonders what she lives on, how often she eats a hot meal.

  Thank you but no, dear. I’m not a great one for foreign food. It tends to repeat on me. I’ve got a nice piece of gammon at home. I’ll have that with a slice of pineapple. That was always John’s favourite.

  Joan’s husband, John. Thirty years dead and buried but still her point of reference for everything from politics to pub food. Nuala smiles, recognising how often she, too, uses the image of her spouse as a kind of moral compass on the journey she’s been taking since his disappearance.

  Joan has started off on a new story, something about a hot-air balloon during the war. Nuala sees that she’s in a particularly garrulous
mood and that’s she’s settled in for the foreseeable future. She opens the fridge door again, pulls out a bottle of white wine, pulls open the cutlery drawer and takes out the corkscrew. It’s going to be a long evening, she thinks.

  ***

  A thousand triggers a day call up reminders of Greg, a thousand traps sprung. A casual remark, a glance, a few bars of music takes her back from now to then, to the life she lived with him. But sometimes she considers not the things that happened, but the things that did not – the places not visited, the ideas not shared, the tales never told – and these thoughts in their own way are just as painful.

  ***

  Some weeks after Semira moves in, a Wednesday afternoon, Nuala finds her sitting at the kitchen table, toiling over a notepad. Neither woman has classes and Nuala’s taken her marking home with her. At first she thinks Semira must be doing some of her language homework. She peers over her shoulder to see if she can help (once a teacher, always a teacher, she thinks with a wince as she does so). But it’s not homework that Semira’s working on, it’s a letter. She scans it momentarily, notes the unfamiliar script, then backs off. At Semira’s side there’s an envelope already addressed in English with a single name.

  Who are you writing to? she asks. She knows she’s being nosy, can’t help it. Who’s Kassa?

  Semira looks up, startled. She’s completely absorbed in the task at hand, hasn’t noticed she’s being watched.

  Kassa? Oh, she’s... she’s a friend. A friend from home.

  Right. What’s she doing now? It’s a simple question, a good opportunity for Nuala to glean a little more information about Semira. She’d like to have a clearer picture of her guest, but somehow the moments for those intimacies never come. Semira pauses for the briefest instant. Nuala notes that she’s already swept up her notebook and pen, is poised to stand up.

  I’ve got to go into town in a minute. Do you need anything? It’s a smooth swerve, artfully done. Nuala doesn’t answer at once. She feels a stab of irritation. Part of her feels that Semira has an obligation to answer her questions. Totally unfair of course, she tells herself. After all, there were no conditions attached to their friendship, and her past history is nobody’s business but her own.

  No, don’t worry. I don’t need anything.

  You will be here to let the children in?

  Sure.

  When Semira has gone, Nuala sits down at the computer. She has emails to write, college work to complete, but she’s still feeling a sense of frustration. Aware of Semira’s Ethiopian background and of her stay in Eritrea, she googles first one country, then the other. She ignores the guilty feeling that she’s engaging in a cross between stalking and espionage.

  Her investigations are interrupted by the door bell and she is forced to abandon the computer. From the hallway she can hear her children’s voices, Beth strident and authoritarian, Sammy whining in protest.

  Yanit and Abebe also make their own way home from school together, though theirs is further away. It’s only since their arrival that Nuala, in the face of her own children’s insistence, has allowed Sammy and Beth to make the return journey alone. Even so, she still feels uneasy, but understands that it is progress of sorts. It is another milestone reached, a further step towards her letting go.

  Inside, the children continue their squabble while Nuala produces mugs of hot chocolate and biscuits. She asks Sammy about his swimming lesson, Beth about the current supply teacher, and successfully distracts them from their argument. When they finish their snack, Sammy goes off to his room to play with his Lego while Beth announces she has English homework and needs the computer. Nuala is still standing in the kitchen, the remnants of the snack in front of her on the table, next to them the work she’s taken home from the staffroom. She looks at the pile of exam papers that she has been trying to ignore. Can’t put it off much longer, she thinks, and picks up her pen with a sigh.

  ***

  A half-term Monday. Nuala has booked the time off as holiday, vaguely planning to take the children on an excursion.

  When Greg was around, the Before time of her life, they’d often jump on the London coach and head for the Tate Modern. The children were younger then, so entertainment could be as simple as running helter skelter across the Millennium Bridge screaming at the top of their voices, or ambling alongside the Thames waving at the tourist pleasure boats.

  For Greg, it was a question of mixing business with pleasure. He’d usually call his agent in advance, and after an hour or so perusing the paintings, Nuala and Greg would take Beth and Sammy up to the café on the fourth floor. Burnley Welsh would be up there already, sitting at a corner table nursing a black coffee, dressed in his trademark charcoal suit and white tee-shirt, stylish and urbane.

  While Nuala bought the food and supervised the children, Greg and Burnley would sit aside and update each other on developments. Nuala knew Greg felt a little guilty about this, but he disliked his professional trips to London, so it was a way of killing two birds with a single stone.

  After thirty minutes or so, Burnley would stand up, shake hands with Greg, nod at Nuala and leave. He never acknowledged the children and seemed only vaguely aware of Nuala’s existence. Once, when Nuala commented on this to Greg, she told him that frankly she found the man decidedly creepy. Greg had laughed, then shrugged. Maybe he’s just a bit shy, he’d suggested. Anyway, he’s very good at his job. But Nuala has always seen reserve as a lame excuse for bad manners, so she distrusts him.

  Today, though, there’s no Greg and no children, and so no Tate trip. It’s been eight, nine months since the crash. The initial gagging, ghastly shock has gone. It’s no longer a violent punch in the stomach, a long, internalised scream. That’s the best part of it, she supposes, the fact that it’s now just a steady, dull ache.

  Still, what she’s also losing is that minuscule glint of hope, that unsaid but ever-present possibility that at any moment her phone would ring and she’d be told that he’d been found, that he was alive, that everything would be OK. That expectation is fading, and though she’d never admit it, there’s a part of her now that would be more capable of absorbing the news of a body.

  So no Greg. But no children, either. Semira’s friends, the Kenyan ones, have arrived an hour before in their van to collect them all for a trip to the Cotswold Wildlife Park. Nuala and Semira have prepared a picnic, and they’ve all bundled into the back of the vehicle, wrapped in raincoats and clutching umbrellas. Nuala has turned down her own invitation after Semira made it clear that she’d be happy to take responsibility for all four children. Nuala’s excuse is lesson planning, but really she just wants a day on her own. For so long she’s sought distraction in company, but today she feels strong enough to face up to herself.

  So the van doors slam. Nuala makes one last effort to give Semira some money for the trip and again Semira refuses. Her friends Tom and Gloria have somehow acquired a free entry ticket for the park, she tells Nuala, so the only expense will be ice creams at the end. Nuala sees that she’s beaten so she shrugs and smiles and the van moves off in a cloud of acrid exhaust.

  Her reminiscences about Burnley and the Tate have reminded her that there is a week-old message from him on her answer machine. He’s remembered Greg mentioning a set of animal sketches he’d done, charcoal on paper, and wondered whether Nuala had seen them around.

  She’s been meaning to have a root in the studio, to let him know if she finds anything. Since Greg’s disappearance, Burnley’s continued to represent his art. He has been scrupulous in providing Nuala with detailed records of revenue and with every penny of earned income, minus his commission of course. She feels a little guilty for her previous mistrust, though she still finds dealing with him a strain. Even after Greg’s disappearance he has never thawed out, never shown much warmth. Not that he has been offensive or rude, just avoided the slightest intimacy. There is never any hint that their relat
ionship is anything other than professional

  Before she begins the hunt, she decides to make coffee. In the old days she would snatch at such moments of freedom, slide herself onto the piano stool and lose herself in her music. But she still cannot bring herself to play. Instead, mug in hand, she wanders vaguely towards the basement studio.

  The room is well lit, the ceiling fitted with rows of spotlights. She remembers people’s surprise when they learned that Greg painted in a basement. Even she knew that painters normally sought as much natural light as possible. But he’d always maintained that paintings were designed to live indoors, so good artificial light was acceptable for his work. Still, whenever the weather permitted, he’d haul his easel out to the back garden and set up shop there.

  The room’s been transformed since Yanit and Abebe’s arrival. Gone are the easels – Greg often had three or four pictures on the go at one time – and the stacked up canvases.

  Gone, too, the wooden table strewn with tubes of oil paint, brushes, rags and bottles of white spirit. There are two built-in cupboards in the basement, and one of these now contains all of the paints and brushes. The easels have been folded up and are stored for the moment in a cupboard in the spare room. Any finished canvases have long since been collected by Burnley. The unused and unfinished ones are secreted around the house, one or two still in the basement cupboard, others in the loft, the spare room, even Nuala’s own bedroom.