The Body Lies

by Jo Baker

  “Same rules would apply. I’d say I was sorry for your trouble, and suggest you seek help if you need it, and I’d ask the class to be alert to your issues. I’d also expect you to get on with your work here and respect class protocol. Just as I did with Nicholas. Okay? Now can we do some actual work now, please?”

  My cheeks were hot. I spoke more sharply than I should have.

  We had one more piece to look at; a section of Meryl’s novel Halfway in which it became clear that the love interest was not only a closeted werewolf, but was also bisexual, much to the fascinated confusion of our heroine. Which set Steven off again. About ticking PC boxes.

  Meryl had a talent for the sudden blush: “I’m really not ticking any boxes.”

  “Then why does he have to be bi?”

  “It makes him the more mysterious and exotic, in a conservative, heteronormative culture.”

  Steven rolled his eyes, and Meryl narrowed hers. I made the right noises to cool things and nudge them along, but all I could think about was that there really shouldn’t be this level of conflict in the class, and that I didn’t know what I could do to diffuse it, and that I still hadn’t managed to winkle any work out of Tim, and was it all my fault? Next week was the last week of Michaelmas term, and scheduled for personal tutorials. As we closed the discussion I passed round a sign-up sheet.

  “What about Nicholas?” Meryl asked as she handed the sheet back to me. I glanced down at the list; there was one space left, the last appointment of the day, six p.m.

  “I’ll pop him down there. Could someone let him know?”

  “I will,” Meryl said.

  I pencilled his name in with a question mark.

  * * *

  —

  Patrick was in the common room, waiting for the kettle to boil. I filled a pint glass from the tap and stood at the counter to drink it.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  Still drinking, I held up my left hand to show that it was shaking.

  “Christ. What’s up?”

  There, in that weirdly corporate common room with its red-and-purple furnishings and fake kumquat tree, in the smell of old coffee and instant soup, I spilled everything to Patrick. All the stuff I’d drip-fed to Mina, plus the new stuff; I felt sure he’d have heard some of it already from her. I told him about Nicholas’s rule, his lost girl, the talk of trigger warnings, his storming out of class and threatening to stay away. I told him about Steven’s fictional murders, his accusations of censorship, snowflakedom and PC gone mad.

  “Crikey. In Eng. Lit. we just read a book and talk about it. Or at least some of us read the book. Or at least I do. And then I talk about it.”

  “I guess it gets more personal when you’re writing the book yourself. You’re laying out your soul for other people to dissect.”

  “You can refer him to Student Services yourself, you know. You don’t have to wait for him to go to them. They’ll chase him up.”

  “Maybe I should.”

  “Call Sian Cutler,” Patrick said. “She’s brilliant.”

  “Okay,” I said, “I’ll look into it.”

  “Sometimes they really get to you. But you can only do so much.”

  I grimaced. “I first met him, I thought, arrogant rich kid. My own prejudice, you know. But I see the mess he’s in, and I feel just so sorry for him, and really feel like I’ve let him down.”

  “I don’t believe that for a minute.”

  “I can’t let him drop out.”

  “He’s the real deal then?”

  “Yeah. I think he probably is.”

  “Well, then he’ll write it anyway, won’t he, MA or no MA.”

  “But if he drops out it’d really mess up my retention rates.”

  Patrick laughed. “So cynical already?”

  I shrugged. “I’m a quick learner.”

  SIAN CUTLER

  STUDENT SERVICES

  Re: Nicholas Palmer

  We have no record of an enquiry or referral from anyone from that department regarding this individual at this time.

  When students are referred to us, or concerns are raised about a student, a file is opened on that student, even if no further action is taken.

  We have no such file on record for Nicholas Palmer.

  I should have realised that tutorials would overrun. That students arrive late, or won’t leave when you need them to. That you should schedule breaks and buffers to accommodate this and your own need for coffee or the loo. I’d seen Karen and Richard and I was chewing my teeth and trying not to look at my watch while listening to Meryl, who couldn’t believe that we were already a third of the way through the MA, everything was going so fast, so much had happened but there was still so much to do. An MFA back home in the States was actually two years, which gave you time to grow, as a person, as well as learn, as a student, and learning mattered but growth was so important, wasn’t it; and here, she felt she was learning, but she wasn’t sure that she was actually growing…I wasn’t sure how I could do anything to help with that. I reminded her we still had a good way to go, and the work seemed to be going well, and that what we were doing here was about a lifetime’s writing and not just about this one year.

  “Yes, yes, I know that. But—”

  Steven loomed outside, peering in through the glass panel. He came in without knocking as soon as Meryl got to her feet, so there was an awkward jostling and shuffling in the narrow space as they negotiated their way past each other.

  “Steven.”

  “Meryl.”

  He was all professional, straight from the office, suited and pinstriped and creased straight up and down. I asked him, with some apprehension, how he thought things were going. And he was blithe and businesslike about it. He had written twenty thousand words, which meant he had another forty thousand words to go and that was where he expected to be by now: a third of the way through, of both the course and the novel. On target, so. Happy enough. As he spoke he looked round my little office with a frown. I watched as the thought solidified: that getting published might not mean being handed the keys to a magical kingdom, but rather to a dim little office considerably less salubrious than his own. No mention of the classroom conflict, though—maybe some of what Nicholas had said had hit home. I didn’t bring it up.

  Tim was ebullient. He was psyched, he told me; the writing was just pouring onto the page. Was he annoyed with himself for not submitting more to class? Of course he was. But was he raring to go for next term? You betcha. He felt he’d really just hit his stride, and was insanely keen to get the guys’ feedback on as much as possible in the new year. I told him I was relieved to hear it. I reminded him to follow guidelines in the coming term, with regard to length and frequency of submissions. But he was already brushing that aside—yeah, of course, yeah, no worries…; anything you had to say he already knew; he was way ahead of you…Thing was, he now had ten thousand words or so that hadn’t been looked at in class yet, so could I just take a glance over the Christmas holidays? I could email him any feedback. That would be fine.

  “Aah, no, sorry. I can’t.”

  He baulked.

  “Thing is, if I did this for you, I’d have to offer the same thing to everyone, and I just don’t have the time.”

  “Yeah, no, course I get that, totally I do.”

  My eye was caught by movement outside the door. Nicholas was leaning against the wall there: the sleeve of a battered grey jacket, and his quarter profile were visible through the glass panel.

  “That’s my next one now.”

  Tim peered over his shoulder. “Oh, Nick, cool.”

  He waved, and went unnoticed; he leaned back to tap the glass. Nicholas was waved in; he entered, taking out earphones. He accepted a fist bump as Tim got up to leave.

  “So, party then,” Tim said. “Should be
cool.”

  I blinked, assumed this was not to do with me.

  “Dude, you did tell her about the party?”

  “I was just going to.”

  Tim teetered on the verge of going but didn’t go. A small end-of-term gathering for the MA crowd, Nicholas told me. Nothing major. Round at his gaff. Would I come?

  “Everyone’s invited?”

  “Yeah. Everyone. So you have to come.”

  It sounded like a disaster. “I can’t really get out in the evening; there’s my little boy, you see.”

  “You can get a babysitter.”

  “I don’t know any round here yet.”

  “I’ll sort it for you.”

  “Huh?”

  “There’s always cards up in the village shop window, advertising. I’ll text you some numbers.”

  “The village shop?”

  “Yeah. You know it.”

  “I’m just surprised you do.”

  “I’m staying with my folks out there, at the moment. Place near the river.”

  “Oh,” I said. I remembered then, through rain-streaked window, a glimpse of jacket and jawline as the bus pulled away. Had he seen me struggling with pushchair and tired child? Did we pass his place when we went to throw stones in the river? Did he overhear me talking nonsense to Sammy, or on my mobile complaining to Mark about work?

  “Give me your number,” he said.

  I recited my number, watched him tap it into his phone. I felt flustered. He flashed me a look, tapped in something else, and my mobile, in my bag, went ping.

  “There you go,” he said. “Now you’ve got my number too.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  Nicholas turned to his friend. “Tim, mate?”

  “Yes.”

  “Off you fuck, now.”

  Tim hesitated, then decided to laugh.

  “No worries. Laters.”

  “We should get started.” I busied myself with papers, shuffling Nicholas’s feedback sheet to the top. I felt hot. “You’ve had a bit of a tough term,” I said.

  “The work is going well, so.” A shrug.

  We talked about the challenges of the rule he’d set himself, about how he was going to shape and frame reality, because the reality of reality was that not everything could be accommodated. That the human brain itself is constantly editing—otherwise we’d be incapacitated by sensory overload, lost in a constant LSD trip. And was there a worry that he might actually catch up with himself, with his current lived experience, and if so what would he do about that? In brief, did he know where he was going?

  It would fall into place, he was confident of that. There was a kind of inevitability about it by now; he was following his narrative thread through the labyrinth, towards the Minotaur. He’d just let it happen.

  I asked, “What did happen, Nicholas?”

  He half shook his head.

  “To her?”

  It was none of my business. He turned to look out of the window, silvery eyes on the grey evening. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he said. “You know that. Talking makes it all shrivel up and shrink.”

  “Just in terms of the story. So I know. Is that something you’re going to give us? Or will you leave it unresolved?”

  “Don’t try and skip ahead,” he said. “You have to give it time.”

  Which made me glance at my watch: a thrill of panic. “Oh my God. I’ve really got to go.”

  “We were about done anyway.”

  The motion-sensitive lights rippled on down the length of the corridor. I struggled into my coat, fumbled my keys, locked up behind us.

  “You can always call by my office hour,” I said, “if we missed anything.”

  I paced alongside his easy lope until we came to my turning.

  “Well, goodnight.”

  “I’m coming your way.”

  There was nothing out there but empty offices, the nursery, the perimeter road, carparks.

  “Where you headed?” I asked.

  “You don’t want to be walking on your own after dark.”

  Then we were out at the perimeter road and there was the pedestrian crossing and the hobbitty nursery building, and I didn’t know what to say to him apart from “Thank you.”

  “So I’ll text you,” he said. “About babysitters.”

  “And your address too, cos I’m not sure which house?”

  “Will do.”

  I started onto the crossing. Then he called out after me: “Hey.”

  I glanced back.

  “Safe home, yeah?”

  I raised a hand to him. I arrived at nursery at the very last moment, and scooped Sammy up and squeezed him and shoved him into his coat. We rattled down the underpass for the bus. I’d expected, half-expected Nicholas to be waiting there, but he wasn’t. The bus was almost empty, and smelt of booze and damp. I stowed the pushchair and sat Sam on my knee, and held him close, and kissed his head, and felt—well, unsettled. By Nicholas’s kindness and his brusqueness and his arrogance. By the tangle that he was. I remembered that text he’d sent me earlier, and fished out my phone. It just said

  Hey there you.

  And that made me smile. Reaching round Sammy’s small warm body, I texted back.

  Hey there you yourself.

  I didn’t refer him to Student Services. I thought, He doesn’t want to talk; why try and make him. The writing helps.

  MERYL E. SHARRATT

  Complaint

  One thing you should know about me straight off is I’m greedy. I want everything. I want to work my ass off and write the most amazing books, and to goof off and go dancing or bake in the sun on a beach. I’m a complete cynic and a desperate romantic. I can be so selfish and I can be so generous too. And I’m persistent; I’ll pursue something like a Terminator if I really want it. And more than anything I want experience, I want to clutch it to me stuff it down my throat make it part of me, all these opposites and everything in between. I know that that’s crazy-impossible. Life can’t be like that, not all the time. That’s why I write. That’s why I came here.

  This place, the university, the town: it has a very British kind of melancholy and I drank it in. There was a charm to the damp campus, the narrow dorm room, the way the bed creaked and the spots where Blu-Tack had pulled the paint from the plaster, the way someone had doodled initials—MW 4 EJ—on the underside of the bookshelf above the bed and drawn a heart around it, and you could only see that when you’re lying down. I loved the way the rain glittered on the windowpanes and pooled on walkways and dripped through the awnings and here and there the ceilings too. I was not unhappy here. This was a place for meditation, for introspection, for kind of cerebral solitude which was, at first, productive. I would go days writing and reading and not speaking to a soul, holed up in my room with my novel or trailing out to get coffee or food. I’d sit in cafés working on my novel. I’d sit in the library working on my novel. For a while I was very much alone here, with my novel, and I loved that way of being.

  I loved it but only because I knew it wasn’t forever. This was a strictly time-limited situation. Once the course was over and I’d handed in my dissertation, I was off to travel Europe. My plan was to keep going until I found wherever Paris in the 1930s was these days—I was hearing good things about Croatia—then I’d settle there and live cheaply until I started making decent money as a writer. And then I’d go wherever I wanted.

  It was a big deal, me making that decision, coming here. I don’t just mean the money; I mean love. I’d had to gnaw off the part of me that was trapped back home, in Halfway. The wound was still raw, and hurting, but I knew I’d done the right thing. If I’d stayed there, with him, gotten all settled and comfortable, I was never going to be the writer that I was going to be. After that, I was determined not to let mys
elf get tangled up with someone again. I was done hurting people, including myself. I had places to go. Things to do. Books to write. Someone to be.

  But Nicholas was a locked box and that got me; I kept tugging at it, tweaking it, trying it from different angles. If I wasn’t careful I would soon be sticking a knife in to lever it open…I asked the others—Tim and Karen—whether they’d figured him out, had they managed to prise the lid off yet?

  “That’s just the way he is,” Tim said with a shrug.

  “But doesn’t it bother you?”

  “What would bother me?”

  “That he seems, I don’t know, so closed off, so self-contained?”

  “You don’t know many English people yet do you, sweetheart?” Karen laughed.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Americans are peaches, soft and sweet on the surface, tough at heart. The English are coconuts: there’s sweet stuff there, only you have to make a bit of an effort to get to it.”

  Maybe it was that, the difficulty of getting into anything sweet that made me so determined. If he had been a peach I’d have eaten him in three bites and been done. I wouldn’t have felt the need to keep tapping, knocking, banging my head against the shell. In class I’d get so little from him. I mean, she clearly thought that he was the star; she made that obvious from the beginning. He got so much attention. I guess he deserved it, but that doesn’t mean that other people didn’t deserve it too.

  We’d be in the college bar, and I’d get goosebumps just standing next to him. I’d catch myself daydreaming about him, when I should have been daydreaming my novel. It occurred to me that if I wasn’t careful I’d be tangled up again. I told myself getting tangled up with another writer could, paradoxically, be liberating.