The Body Lies

by Jo Baker

  I tilted my head. I could be flexible. Flexible was not a problem. Preparing and delivering an entire lecture strand out of the blue, when I had never so much as taught at a university before, was. Everything I had to say about writing would fill the first ten minutes of the first lecture. Maybe fifteen, if I spoke very slowly.

  “I noticed that my PGCHE course has a three-hour session on time management coming up,” I said. “In a month or so.”

  “Well, that sounds wonderful,” he said, and beamed at me, his face folding into crevasses. “I’m sure you’ll find that very helpful.”

  I nodded. I’d meant it as a joke.

  * * *

  —

  The bus reeled out of the university, wove round suburban estates, then chugged into the clogged arteries of the town centre, windscreen wipers creaking. It was crowded and I’d had to fold and stow the pushchair; we sat at the front, Sammy sideways on my knee. He smelt of Plasticine and milk and his long day. We called Mark. I told him about the lecture strand, the teacher-training course, the reading list. Mark sympathised; he had got a bucketload of marking himself to do. But still, he’d be up at the weekend, was looking forward to it.

  The bus emptied itself at the stops through town, grew quiet. We passed a last row of redbrick semis, crossed the motorway flyover, and were out into the countryside. Straggling grass, damp sheep, looped pylons, the moors like sleeping monsters. No more gabbled conversations now, just the faint hiss of someone’s headphones.

  When we got off at the crossroads, the rain came at us sideways. The bus pulled away with its one remaining passenger. Grey jacket, beanie, headphones, angles of jaw and cheekbone through the misty dirt-grained window. By the time I’d got Sammy into the pushchair and hauled the weather shield down over him I was soaked through. We trudged up towards the house.

  At the farm, the cowshed was full of steam and shifting black and white; here and there a head was raised and huge dark eyes stared back at me. Sammy had gone quiet; I bobbed down to check on him. He was wide awake, sitting forward in the pushchair, his little fingers pressed against the inside of the rain-cover, following the glittering raindrops down with his fingertips. He smiled me a big wet smile. We rattled on through the yard, past a huddle of crates and pallets and an old timber barrel lying on its side. A dog leapt out at us. We both yelled in shock, matching the noise of its barking; I swerved the pushchair aside. The dog stopped just short of us, right out on the end of its chain. Sammy wailed; I held a hand out towards the dog, palm up.

  “Easy there, easy.”

  “Moss!” someone yelled. “Moss!”

  A man came pounding up towards us in his cut-off wellies, a shotgun case on his shoulder.

  “Moss, now, that’ll do.”

  She went silent; the chain slackened and snaked on the ground as she turned to go to him.

  “G’lass.” He touched her head with his free hand, and went to let her off her chain.

  “Please no—”

  “S’alright.” Released, she just sat down, and looked up at him. Her tail swept the wet tarmac. She was matted and dirty, and her coat sparkled with water.

  “I’m John Metcalfe,” the man said, and offered his hand. “This is my farm.”

  His face was deep-lined, lean, shadowed by upturned collar and the brim of his cap. I shook his hand. It was hard and cold. The dog watched.

  “She dun’t know you, is all,” he said. He pushed his cap back, the brim dripping. “You’ve not been properly introduced.”

  I tentatively offered her the back of my hand, and she sniffed it.

  “Is that her kennel?” I saw now that there was a dim bundle of blankets inside the barrel.

  “Aye.”

  “Isn’t that a bit cold for her?”

  “She’s a working dog; you don’t keep pets on a farm. Though happen you could do with one.”

  “One what?”

  “A pet. A dog. For company.”

  “Oh we’re fine as we are.”

  “It’s lonely enough up here.”

  “We moved here for the peace and quiet.” I could hear my southern vowel sounds. I hadn’t realised before that I had an accent.

  “Aye well. Happen you’ll change your mind, come wintertime. Think on.”

  * * *

  —

  We got indoors with a fumbling of keys and straps and clips and zips and shoelaces. Set down on his feet, Sammy waddled up the hall and into the kitchen and was requesting juice while I was still peeling myself out of wet clothes in the hallway. Back in London I’d never got beyond the nod and hello on the stairs. Here for a fortnight and the neighbours were already making free with their advice. Like it was any of his business. Like I had time to look after a dog. I stripped down to my bra and pants, grabbed a jumper off the radiator and slung it on; in the kitchen I bundled my wet clothes into the washing machine. I sorted Sammy out and gave him a cup of juice, then hitched him up onto my hip and opened cupboards and he stared over my shoulder and sucked on his drink.

  “What’ll we have for dinner?”

  But he leaned away to peer past me, over towards the window, and chewed on a finger. His cheeks were flushed. I touched his forehead. If he got ill he couldn’t go to nursery, and if he couldn’t go to nursery I couldn’t go to work, and I had to work. I checked the Calpol bottle and there was a good inch in the bottom, which would have to do, but I’d save it till it was absolutely necessary.

  “We could have…” I was almost out of food and totally out of ideas. “Beans on toast, or pasta and pesto. Or…I dunno.”

  He still didn’t answer. I turned to look where he was looking, and he shifted in my arms to keep his eyes on the window. It was dim outside, overcast and getting on for dusk now, and with the kitchen light on, the window was sheened over by our reflections: my pale bare legs and baggy sweater and scrubbed-up hair, and him, small and beautiful on my hip. I hitched him up higher and went over to the window, and I stood him up in the empty sink and held him round his belly as we stared out together at the overgrown garden, the leggy shrubs, the battered bare lilac branches, the dwarf wall and stone steps up towards the fields and moors and woods and sky. It was all wind-tossed and moving, still teeming down with rain.

  “What were we looking at exactly, Sonny Jim?”

  He took his finger out of his mouth and pressed it damply against the windowpane.

  “Out dere,” he said.

  “No way, sweetheart. We’re not going out there. We just got in.”

  He slapped his palms flat against the glass and stared out. I peered with him, out into the wet garden: it had a livid intensity to it, all shadows and yellow light, but I couldn’t see what in particular had captured his attention.

  “What do you see, Sammy?”

  He leaned in closer, breath misting the pane, eyes narrowing. And he said, “Man.”

  I scooped him back, grabbed the light switch and flicked it off. The two of us stood in the sudden dusk, him warm against me. We stared out into the weather-battered garden. I couldn’t see anything. Couldn’t see a man.

  “Was it the farmer man?”

  Sammy didn’t respond.

  “Did you see that farmer man out there, Sammy?”

  He blinked at me, bewildered.

  I set him on the floor, then rattled the blind down. I stood listening. Then I thought to check that the back door was locked. Sammy, though, pulled a tea towel off the front of the cooker and took it upon himself to clean the kitchen wall.

  “You were just making it up, weren’t you, Sammy? I don’t mind if you were.”

  He stopped what he was doing and looked at me. One of his assessing looks. Then he nodded, and pottered off to the living room, where I heard the television come on. Gentle chat, and the theme for CBeebies bedtime hour. I stood, shaky, in the kitchen, looking
at the dimpled glass panels of the back door. Then I switched the light back on, and made our dinner.

  * * *

  —

  That night, Sam woke yelling from a nightmare. I stumbled into his room and picked him up and carried him back to bed with me. He whimpered and mumbled then drifted off again; I lay awake, listening to the empty distance and the weather and the indoor emptiness of the house. I thought of Mr. Metcalfe, his face craggy and cold, saying, Happen you’ll change your mind, come wintertime.

  Think on.

  MA GROUP MICHAELMAS TERM 2016

  NAME STUDENT NO.

  Gordon, Richard. 9056325002

  Checked shirt, grey hair, hefty; works at the Power Station. Didn’t quite catch exactly what he does. Writing “a romantic novel with a twist.”

  Haygarth, Steven. 9056325003

  Solicitor. Nicely turned out. Writing crime fiction, set locally.

  Harrington, Tim. 9056325004

  Awkward, loud fellow. Seems like a sweetheart. Dystopian novel.

  Morgan, Karen. 9056325005

  Social worker. Writes magical realist short stories. She’s all soft colours and meaningful-looking silver jewellery; a sharp eye, though.

  Palmer, Nicholas. 9056325001

  Bildungsromane/Künstlerroman: “Chemistry.” “Dark,” “edgy,” “art.”

  Sharratt, Meryl E. 9056325007

  Sweet American kid. Seems smart and very committed. Work on her YA werewolf novel already well under way.

  Postgraduate Mixer. It was held just down the corridor from my office, in the Senior Common Room, which was a grand title for a kitchenette, two seminar tables pushed together, half a dozen chairs and a fake kumquat tree in a pot. As I worked at my desk, I’d been aware of people passing, of voices gathering there and the noise swelling. I’d been trying to finish writing my first lecture, but was beginning to suspect that it’d never be finished, not even after I’d delivered it. By the time I threw in the towel, and went to join the fun, the room was packed and loud and smelt strongly of damp coats, old coffee and wine. I had to tap elbows and excuse myself and nudge my way through.

  I found myself next to Professor Scaife at the refreshments table. I lifted a glass of orange juice, said hello.

  “Have you seen Professor Lynch?” I scanned the crowds. Michael Lynch was the other poet; the whippety one: I’d checked his photo on the departmental website. If I could pick Michael’s brains I might stand a chance of getting through this year alive…

  “Oh no. Mike doesn’t come to these.”

  “Oh?” and I had so much work to do: “I didn’t know it was optional…”

  “Oh it isn’t. It’s mandatory. It’s just Mike never comes.”

  I was just about to ask how that worked, when Scaife volunteered: “And even if he did, he couldn’t.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Well, he’s in Canada.”

  “Canada?”

  Scaife picked up a bottle of white wine. “Top you off?”

  I shook my head, showed him the juice.

  “Did no one tell you? I thought someone would have told you.” He filled his own glass to the brim. “He landed a year’s residency at the Irish Centre in Toronto. Sounds like a nice little jaunt for him, don’t you think?”

  “A year?”

  He nodded.

  “So this year Creative Writing is just me?”

  “Hey what’s that?” He leaned even closer to hear me.

  “This year, I’m all the staff there is, for Creative Writing?”

  “Well, when you put it like that, yes. Until Simon gets better, you are the only full-time member of staff. Let’s hope four months sees him right.”

  All these new students, paying so much money, to be taught by me?

  “Maybe he’ll bounce back,” Scaife said. “Quite unpredictable, isn’t it? Stress is such a tricky creature.”

  “Isn’t it,” I said, though I wasn’t supposed to know about Dr. Peters’s stress. “But the thing is, I’d assumed one of them was going to be my mentor…”

  “Hmm?”

  “It’s in the teacher-training manual. All new staff are appointed a mentor. But it looks like everyone who does the kind of thing I do is suddenly hors de combat.”

  “Tell you what. I’ll do it. I’ll be your mentor. It’d be a pleasure.” He patted me on my arm, then his hand curled round it, and gave it a little squeeze. “It’ll be good to get to know each other a little better. And I do need to get a firmer grasp on Creative Writing.”

  I stood stiffly, in his grip, then I shifted slightly so that his hand fell away. “Thanks.”

  I raised my glass and said I’d better go find my new students, and he acknowledged this with a dip of the head. Maybe it wasn’t actually a bad thing to have the Head of Department as my mentor. He must at least know what he was doing.

  As I weaved my way across the room, I spotted that kid I’d given the brush-off on the square, the good-looking almost-ugly guy with the cigarettes and the scar through his eyebrow. He was in the company of a stout lad in leather blouson jacket who seemed to be bending his ear. Our eyes caught, and he half-smiled, half-winced. We both knew who we were now; we even had the name tags to prove it. I smiled at him. At the moment there was no way through the knots of people, so I just raised a hand and moved on. I found three of my new students, who had already found each other: Steven, Karen and Richard. We bellowed at each other amicably for a while. A little later, when the crowds had thinned and it was quieter, I got talking to Meryl, whose name tag revealed her to be also one of mine. She was eating Cheesy Wotsits from the buffet table. I liked the way she did it, determined, thoughtful, as though the eating of Cheesy Wotsits was a cultural experience to be considered in its own right.

  “You know,” she said, “these are pretty much the same as Cheetos.”

  I asked her about her work, and she was off on a wild delighted gallop through her novel-in-progress. Her book was set in small-town Oregon (“I’m from Halfway, Oregon; well, I’m from a coupla miles north of Halfway, and a coupla miles north of Halfway is really just a coupla miles north of the Middle of Nowhere”). Her heroine has just moved to an isolated house outside town, with an overprotective mother; Dad is absent. She doesn’t fit in at her cliquey high school; her mom won’t allow her to do any of the usual high school social things, and her dad is not just absent, but actually missing….It’s only when she finally makes a friend, and gets to go to one of the high school parties—that she discovers that those cliques and gangs are in fact packs. The local kids are werewolves.

  “It’s called Halfway. After the town. And because it’s about being in-between.”

  “Woah.”

  Her face split into a grin. She had Wotsit gunk on her teeth. “Yeah.”

  “I look forward to reading it.”

  “I’m super excited to be writing it!”

  I really loved Meryl right then, her enthusiasm, her openness. She seemed so fearless. She even asked me what I was working on. I drew a breath to tell her, but then the kid from the square was with us.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Hello again.”

  “Yeah. Huh. Awkward.” He was the picture of flustered good manners. “I didn’t realise you were staff; I’m new here. Obviously.” He tapped his name badge. Nicholas Palmer. “I thought you were a student, that day, on the square.”

  “It’s the way I dress, isn’t it. I’m just too scruffy to be staff.”

  “You can’t be too scruffy to be staff. Actually you just look too young.”

  I laughed.

  “Seriously,” he said. “Doesn’t she”—he peered in at Meryl’s name badge—“Meryl?”

  Meryl smiled, happy to be drawn in. “Totally,” she agreed.

  “I’m thirty-three,” I s
aid.

  “You don’t look it.”

  “You should see the portrait in my attic.”

  Meryl laughed delightedly at this; he smiled, but looked at me steadily with those pale opaque eyes, as if he was checking me for signs of thirty-three-ness. I felt a little pink under his scrutiny. I felt a little flattered. What was he? Twenty-four, twenty-five? No older than that, certainly, and with the sheen of money on him. And then he turned to Meryl, and offered her his hand.

  “It’s good to meet you, Meryl.”

  Meryl lifted her hand to take his, then noticed that the fingers were still dusty with Wotsit pollen. She set her glass down and brushed them clean, and offered her hand again. He took it, met her gaze steadily, and with a smile climbing one cheek.

  “Back home you get a bunch of napkins with everything,” she said. A blush blotched her chest, rose up her neck and flooded her cheeks. I wondered if Nicholas knew that he was doing it, if he did it deliberately, this thing of making women think that he really, really noticed them.

  “Ah well, you see, they’re still on ration here,” I said.

  She boggled at me: “Really?”

  “Not really.” I turned to Nicholas. “Meryl was just telling me about her novel: it sounds great. What are you working on, Nicholas?”

  “It’s not so easy to talk about.”

  “You’re going to have to get used to it, now you’re doing the MA.”

  “Well, yes.”

  “And there’s no time like the present,” I said. I suppose I wanted to put him on the back foot, after he’d backfooted the two of us by being all interested and noticing.

  He hesitated, placing his words like they were seeds in a tray: “I’ve been working on it for a long time. I have a good part of it written. The idea of the MA, for me, is that it’ll give me structure, that it’ll enable me to finally complete it.”

  “And what’s it about, your novel?”