‘It’s this way.’ He started up the stairs.
The canteen was, like everything else in this college, huge. Long, with regulation parquet floors and round tables with room for eight (maybe ten people, if everyone ate with their elbows tucked in). The right wall was floor to ceiling glass, giving you an unhindered view of the various halls of residence that were dotted around the campus. All the halls of residence looked like slightly narrower and shorter versions of sixties tower blocks, they were the same colour, probably designed by the same architect. As you entered the canteen through big wooden swing doors, you headed left for the service line: a long counter with glass protecting us from the food; behind it stood women and men in white kitchen overalls and white net caps ready to dish up.
I ordered fisherman’s pie with a double side order of peas and a bottle of water. I paid, stepped away from the cashier, then went into new girl free fall. I was all alone here.
The canteen instantly doubled in size. Then tripled. Then tripled again. It went on tripling in length and width until the far wall was nothing but a blip on the very distant horizon. I was suddenly the smallest girl in the world standing in the biggest room in the world.
I’d just come from the longest, most tedious briefing in the history of job briefings, there was nothing in my job description I didn’t now know. The horror of it was going to live for ever in my mind. I did not need to eat by myself on top of that.
The room buzzed with chatter and eating and drinking and cutlery hitting crockery. And bonding. I couldn’t see anyone sat alone. My footsteps would probably echo and echo and echo as I headed for a solitary table. Everyone would make ‘look at saddo’ eyes at each other about me as I took up a seat alone and ate alone. Gwen, the head of department, had sent me off to lunch on my tod, saying, ‘I have lots of important things to do. I’ve scheduled your meetings with the three other lecturers you’ll be working with for later this afternoon. Bye.’ It didn’t occur to her that me being new, this being my first day, I’d need someone to lunch with. Or, failing that, directions to the canteen.
Across the canteen, someone waved, and the room returned to normal size. I wasn’t wearing my glasses so I couldn’t tell who it was from their face. They were a blue and white fuzz amongst the general colours and shapes in the canteen. Maybe they weren’t waving at me at all. The room swelled again. I glanced over my shoulder, no one but the cashier behind me and she had her back to the waver. I peered forward, craning my neck and narrowing my eyes; the shape seemed familiar, as were the clothes. A white, long-sleeved top and blue jeans. Mel? He got up, beckoned, pointed to the plastic orange seat opposite him. My body sagged with relief. Thank you, God! I will try very hard to get to church some time very soon.
‘Hi,’ he said as I approached.
‘Hi,’ I grinned. Mel probably thought I spent my entire life in a constant state of relief and desperation.
‘This is Claudine,’ Mel said, indicating to the serene woman on his right. She was make-you-jealous gorgeous. Cropped, raven-black hair, Mediterranean skin, plump lips. This woman, this Claudine, had eyes that actually smouldered as she looked at you. ‘Claudine, this is Ceri, she’s the new person I was telling you about.’
Claudine’s face broke into a friendly grin. ‘Hi ya,’ she said, ‘how’s it going?’
‘Not bad, so far,’ I said and reached for my fork – only to find it wasn’t there. No cutlery. Great. I’d have to do the walk of shame back to the cashier. I’d feel a 24ct fool, sidling up to her, smiling, nicking a fork then running away again. Those were moments I had nightmares about. I’d already relived a million and one times flailing about with another woman on Leeds station concourse. Each reliving brought a new and deeper horror. Sophistication was all about not doing those sorts of things. Bet women like Claudine didn’t do those things.
‘Here,’ Mel said, giving me the second fork on his tray. ‘I got this for Clau, cos she always forgets her cutlery, but for the first time ever, she remembered.’
Claudine rolled her smouldery eyes. ‘Just give her the damn fork Melvin. All Ceri needs to know is that it’s clean, and your lips haven’t been anywhere near it.’
‘Thanks,’ I said, taking the fork, digging into the creamy sauce, hitting the white flesh of the fish with gusto. I was hungry. The kind of hunger that came from being so nervous I couldn’t eat on Sunday and I couldn’t even force water down my neck this morning.
‘What’s your PhD on?’ Claudine asked after they’d watched me wolf down a couple of mouthfuls. I was that hungry the food didn’t even touch the sides.
I swallowed a full mouthful, not wanting to talk with my mouth full – I was well brought up like that. In fact, I was constantly horrified that people sat happily chewing away while telling you some convoluted tale. ‘I’m not actually doing a PhD,’ I said to Claudine. ‘I’m not technically studying either. I’m doing a year’s research in the psychology department. I’ve had this idea in my head for years and I’m actually following it up. I’ll also be lecturing first year, a bit of second year psychology, and taking tutorials. If it works out, I might be allowed to apply for a PhD course, though.’
‘I didn’t realise All Souls did that,’ Claudine replied.
‘They don’t, usually. I happened to write to them about it around the same time that woman from the psychology department left.’
Claudine turned to Mel, ‘Is that Eva?’
Mel nodded.
‘Yeah, I think her name was Eva. They were desperate cos she left so late in the year,’ I continued. ‘I’ve taken over most of her teaching duties, well, I will be from tomorrow.’
‘I guess from your accent you’re from London?’ Claudine asked.
I nodded. ‘Although I did my first degree up here in Leeds. I lived up here for five years altogether.’
‘Do you lecture in London?’ Mel asked.
I shook my head. Braced myself to tell them what I did. ‘No. I’m . . . I was . . . I am, I suppose, a journalist.’
I was terrified of not sounding qualified or experienced enough for my current teaching position. Journalist to psychology lecturer did not sound experienced or qualified a leap. Even I wasn’t convinced about the leap and that leaping was being done by me.
‘I’ve got a masters in journalism, I did that in London, and I have taught and lectured in psychology,’ I added quickly. ‘I mean, I taught psychology A-level for a bit before I went back to London, and I did a bit of psychology lecturing in London, on the subject I’m researching. I also lectured a bit in journalism. You se—’
‘Whoa, calm down,’ Mel said.
‘This isn’t an interview,’ Claudine finished.
I relaxed against the uncomfortable orange seat, an interview was exactly how this felt. How everything felt. A gigantic test. Because I couldn’t help thinking there’d been some kind of mistake. I’d written to the college on spec, on the off chance that they had an opening in the psychology department for someone who wasn’t very experienced but who could take seminars while doing research. And All Souls took me seriously. Suddenly they were inviting me to an interview, then another interview, then a written test. Then a test lecture followed by another interview and, WHAM-BAM! I’d got this made-up position. My sister wouldn’t trust me with her goldfish when she went on holiday, and this college was entrusting some ninety or so formative minds to me. How was that going to work?
‘Do you two always have lunch together?’ I asked them to deflect the attention firmly away from me.
Claudine and Mel looked at each other, then returned their joint gaze to me. ‘Yeah, pretty much,’ they said together.
Awww, bless. I got a kick out of seeing couples in love. It gave me hope: if other people could find that sort of closeness, then so could I. It could be done, so I could do it. Besides, the bitter, twisted jealous route had got me a bad rep and wrinkles.
‘That’s really good that you two can work together and lunch together every day and not have i
t damage your relationship. How long have you been going out?’
‘Sorry?’ Claudine replied.
‘Excuse me?’ Mel asked.
‘You two, how long have you been going out together?’ I repeated.
Silence hacked into the good humour like a machete into plywood.
Oh, good God. I’ve done it again.
I was infamous for wading into situations, mouth first. I tried not to, I just couldn’t help myself. A question formed in my head, it came out of my mouth a microsecond later. There was no time for the thought to drop by the ‘how’s that going to sound out loud?’ centre of my brain, in fact, it bolted right past it, wearing a disguise so good no one recognised it.
It was my total lack of fear in asking the questions other people pussyfooted around that made me a good journalist. And a nightmare dinner party guest. I’d once asked someone across a dinner table, ‘So, did you finally end your four-year celibacy with that blind date last weekend?’ Everyone else was thinking it, I’d said it. Silence was the reply, then, too.
I stopped eating as the current silence lengthened. I could-n’t fit any more food into my mouth anyway, what with there being a size eight trainer rammed in my gob.
‘I live with my boyfriend, Kevin,’ only thin veins of ice laced Claudine’s previously warm voice. ‘Have done for two years.’
Mel’s tone had evened out as he said: ‘I’m not seeing anyone special.’
But, but . . . I looked from her face to his face to her face . . . two seconds with them and you knew, you just knew they were together, emotionally linked, COUPLED, dammit. It radiated from them like heat from a flame. Their emotion, their adoration, their affection, their attraction. Felt and reciprocated.
‘Oh, sorry, I was doing that thing again,’ I launched myself into an apology. ‘You know that perception thing?’ Blank faces greeted me. ‘There’s this theory in psychology about perception and how people often fill in the missing information in stuff like pictures and sentences with what they expect to be there. That’s what I was doing, filling in the missing information with something, anything, the first thing that came to mind. Sorry.’
They both looked at me.
NOOOOOOOO! Not The Look. Not The Silence. If you’ve messed up, and are trying to explain, the worst thing – other than being told you’ve disappointed someone – is to get The Look back. Hostility, disgust and hurt all balled up in one expression. Coupled with The Silence, it’s unbearable.
I could now either shut up and let The Silence take its course, or keep talking until my voice ran dry/someone told me to shut up.
I’m not good at silences.
‘Thing is, at our age, I kind of expect most people to be coupled up,’ I explained. ‘That’s not to say that everyone should be coupled, I just expect them to be. Even though I’m not. And when I see two people getting on so well, I kind of . . . That’s not to mean . . . Just cos you’re friendly with someone you’re automatically going out together, I suppose I wasn’t thinking and it j—’
‘It’s all right,’ Mel said, or maybe it was Claudine. Who could tell the difference?
‘We get that sort of thing all the time,’ Claudine said.
‘Yeah, most people just hint at it though,’ Mel added.
‘No one has actually come out and said it before,’ Claudine continued.
‘Not directly,’ Mel finished.
See? SEE?! They didn’t simply finish each other’s sentences, they knew what the other one was thinking; they actually voiced each other’s train of thought. That’s not normal. That’s not ‘living with a boyfriend for two years’; that’s not ‘seeing no one special’. That’s, ‘I’m involved with the person I’m sitting next to’.
‘Sorry, I’m a bit too direct. People tell me I’m like Cordelia, you know, from Buffy The Vampire Slayer? I think something, I say it, people look at me like they want to rip the tongue right out of my head. Sorry.’
I started shovelling food into my grand canyon of a mouth, then swallowed. I didn’t see the need for chewing. I wanted to get away as quickly as possible.
Part of the reason I’d run away from London was so I could stop spreading my foot in mouth disease. I could reinvent myself. Be quiet, demure, sophisticated and – most importantly – not get involved.
I’d even sat on the train and formulated my own Commandments. (No offence whatsoever to God was meant. I knew I couldn’t come up with a set of Commandments to rival His, but I needed something to work towards.) They went something like this:
Thou shalt sort out thy cardiovascular system
Thou shalt NOT get involved in other people’s lives
Even if they’re really, really nice thou shalt remember Commandment 2
Thou shalt think before thy speaks
Thou shalt think again before thy speaks
Thou shalt watch less Angel
Thou shalt remember that Angel is a 250-year-old vampire who dated Buffy The Vampire Slayer, not the man you’re going to be with for ever and ever.
Simple. No? Easy. No? And I’ve broken two of them within, oooh, four hours. A personal best.
When my throat was definitely taking no more lodgers, I put down the fork and swallowed hard to get rid of the food lump so I could speak.
‘Anyway, I’d better get going, I’ve got to meet another lecturer and find out what I’ll be doing for them.’ In an hour and a half.
I put my hands on either side of my tray, stood. ‘I’ll see you both around?’ I knew I sounded desperate, but I couldn’t help it, I thought I’d managed to get myself some friends then. Nothing major, just a couple of people to sit with in the canteen, extend my social circle in college to two.
‘Yeah, course,’ Mel said.
‘When you’re assigned an office, I’ll come over and we can have a coffee, if you want,’ Claudine said.
‘Great, I’ll see you soon.’
Yeah, yeah, I’ll be lucky if I see either of you again.
spring term
(and it was ‘term’, dammit. No one is going to make me call it a semester)
chapter four
Dress Rehearsal
‘I really don’t know why you’ve asked me to come here,’ Jess said, from the comfort of my bed. She was supposedly helping me to choose what to wear for my first lecture tomorrow morning, but in reality, she was under the covers watching Coronation Street while I paced the length of my room – of which there was quite a lot – and fretted about my first day as lecturer proper.
Me. Ceri D’Altroy, a lecturer.
The very thought made my stomach turn and twist like a wind chime in a strong breeze.
This had all been fantastic in theory. Y’know, like the heart’s desire thing, I wanted to do it when it was an idea I’d scrawled down on a piece of paper under the heading ‘goals’.
I’d always quite liked the idea of being an academic. That was why I’d applied for a PhD all those years ago. I wanted to carry on learning while helping with the teaching process. I liked lecturing, enjoyed the power it gave me. You stand up there, in front of people, you tell them what you know, they interject with their theories and together you helped to build a new theory, a new understanding.
I’d been seduced by that idea; of having that power all the time. Even though over the years, Jess had told me that students had changed. ‘They don’t have a thirst for learning like they did when you were a student,’ she said. ‘They’re more interested in what they need to know for the exams than in expanding their minds.’ I suppose that was part of why I wanted to do this as well. I wanted to see if I could help turn back the tide. Stop students being simply fixated on the exams. When I was a student, we – rather sadly some might say – used to look forward to certain lectures when we could debate stuff. Like in Jess’s lectures, the philosophy of psychology. There was so much to think and talk about we’d often overrun. Or we’d stop at the end, go get coffees, come back and debate some more. I wanted that with my students. I want
ed them to be so into my lectures they didn’t mind if they overran.
Of course, with this lecturing lark, it didn’t hurt that I’d get to talk, too. I loved talking. Not speaking, per se. I loved to think out loud at someone, to formulate theories and ideas and self-invectives through communicating with other people. I loved listening and having that spark of understanding or that flame of indignation lit in my head. So, on top of continuing to research what had, over the years, become my specialist subject, this was my idea of a dream job.
I just had no idea what to wear.
‘I asked you here because I needed a second opinion on what to wear tomorrow. I can’t very well ask Jake or Ed, I’ve only lived with them for three days, they’ll think I’m mad. So, you’ll do.’ Jess had planned to spend the evening with her husband and daughters, and had got quite far into that plan, which meant when she’d turned up at my place she’d been shrouded in her mac and Wellington boots. Underneath them she was wearing the grey fleece pyjamas I’d bought her last Christmas – they matched mine. She’d got straight into my bed and put on Emmerdale.
Jess’s eyebrow arched up and her head creaked round to face me. ‘Oh will I now, D’Altroy?’
‘Yes.’ Her expressive eyebrows didn’t scare me. Much.
‘What I meant was, I don’t know why you asked me over for this. We all know what you’re going to wear.’
I stopped pacing. ‘Do we?’
Jess flung back the covers in a move born of frustration, got out of bed and marched across to the large oak wardrobe, threw open the wardrobe doors. ‘OK, let’s see what’s in here, shall we.’ She reached into the wardrobe’s depths, pulled out an item of clothing on a hanger. ‘What’s this?’ she said, raising the hanger so I could see it.
‘My white long-sleeved top.’
Jess flung it onto the floor – the bed was too far away for her to hit it. She reached into the wardrobe again. ‘And what’s this?’
‘My red long-sleeved top.’
‘Hm-hm.’