The Scars
By William Tennant
Copyright 2010 William Tennant
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Copyright 2010 William Tennant
“You see, the problem with you, Mags, and people like you is that you don’t know what you want. You fall in love” the word was spat “You proclaim your love, as if some great revelation, but you don’t know what it is, what it involves.”
Mags watched as an arm arched back and dealt her a forceful blow, she tried to turn, but was bound so tightly that she could only move the flat of her cheek towards the oncoming strike.
“Love is a sickness, a cancer. It tore into me and I was nearly destroyed.” cracked lips spoke, flecked with white saliva. “Everything I did was in the name of love, everything I thought was for love, but love has never helped me.”
The voice rose to a hysterical, threatening pitch. “As lust and liking fades away, love is supposed to be what remains. An incandescent core, something we use to bend the cold steel of out lives.” Mags felt an unexpected kick crash viciously into her shin, another punch land hard in her ribs.
“Love is a hollow sham, a name that we put to our hatred of loneliness, a word that we use to make us accept all those things that we hate.” Mags’ shoulders were being gripped harshly now, she could see her own reflection in a vast pair of pupils and she could see the deep heart of lunacy that was a dancing black flame, the other side of reflection.
“And I am so much stronger now that I no longer have love.” The tone had changed to that of explaining two plus two to a child. “Don’t you see that? If you shut love out, you have a power at your command that is mightier than a thousand swords. A power that everyone could have, but no-one knows about.” A knife was raised, harsh fluorescent light playing along its clinical blade. “You can transcend all this…” the knife traced a thin bleeding line above Mags’ left breast, “You can become something higher, an angel, a god, a demon.” A harsh ball of spit hit Mags full in the face; a hurt more than the blows she had received.
“We are born alone Mags, and I believe we should die alone.” A knife was raised and allowed to play across a palm and a throbbing sickness rose in Mags schoolgirl throat.
“You are mine, Mags, and you will never see the sun shine again…”
1. The River
This could be an English rainforest.
The river meanders lazily off to the back right. The banks that lead down to it look populated by creepers and vines, but closer inspection would tell us that they are merely ivy and rotting oaks. The banks are so steep that they lend the vast panorama of the river an intimate and subtle air.
The foreground of the picture shows a different beauty entirely.
Jade is smiling at the lens, the long fingers of her left hand raised in either caution or admonishment.
She is wearing a simple white vest top, a pair of jeans we can only see the waistband of, and a small silk scarf.
The bright Northern sun is behind her and has given the picture a soft misty focus. Jade’s pale blond hair looks like threads of woven milk.
To the right of the picture, a girl with a whistle and a clipboard swelters in the sun.
Durham is a beautiful city, thought Peter as he rested the oars and lay back in the boat, but it is wasted on students. As he shuffled his shoulders to a more comfortable position and stretched out his long legs, he accepted a glass of pink wine from Jade and sipped thoughtfully. He looked past her, looked to the steep banks that pinned down the Wear on either side, looked up to the thin ribbon of concrete that is Kingsgate bridge, turned his head back to the stout stone majesty of Elvet Bridge, and he liked what he saw. This place has Magnificence, he thought; it has History etched into every stone.
Over four years of living there, Peter had nursed a gentle contempt for a great number of his fellow students and their lack of awe with their beautiful surroundings; they were either obsessively academic, or frustratingly carefree. Never noticing the breathtaking splendour within which they walked.
He looked at Jade, who was settling back, knotting her legs with his and flicking through a well-thumbed novel from beneath her pink framed sunglasses. It would be nice to say that he had found a kindred spirit in her, that she too was someone who not only studied the leaves but liked to watch them fall, but she was not.
She was the most Sloaney, pearl wearing, horse owning, public school, spoilt brat that Peter had ever met. She had not the slightest concern for the quality of degree she received and had a frustrating habit of falling on her feet at every turn. Peter loved every single inch of her.
They had met in a frenzy of alcohol and self-expression nearly four years previously, had fallen headlong into a sweep of lust before they knew anything about each other, and spent the rest of their time at university in a cocoon of ever-expanding love. They shouldn’t have made a good couple; she had been born into money and high society and had lived the first eighteen years of her life in a rambling country mansion. Peter had been born into lower-middle class and a small suburban semi. She had attended a famous public school; he had attended an infamous school with the rest of the public.
For each of them, though, something clicked about the other. She loved Peter’s grounded honesty and self-awareness; he loved her sheer passion for life, a passion that had come from never having had to worry about anything.
She saw him looking at her and paused in her reading. She pushed the pink sunglasses further up her nose and looked back.
“What’s up, Pete?” she asked as she took a sip from her own glass of wine. She smiled gently and his heart almost broke, she was so beautiful.
“Nothing. Just nothing.” A wide smile spread slowly across his face and he ran the instep of his right foot up her left leg. “Just happy. Content.” He closed his eyes and stretched a little more. He was determined to take in every tiny detail about this day, so that in years to come he could bring out the memories and cherish them. He had no idea how important these memories would become.
Today was part of a tradition for Peter and Jade. Every year after their last exam they would hire a boat, drift down the river and soak up the world. They always hired the same numbered boat, they always bought the same bottle of wine and drank it from the same slender flutes. At the end of their second year they had waited for ‘their’ boat for over an hour, such was the importance of lucky number 9.
Today would be different. Every so often, Peter let his hand brush against the small box nestled deep in his jeans pocket, let himself feel the future unfold from the tiny diamond resting in the silver band, and allowed himself another smile and another sip of wine.
A sudden shift in the boat and a kick against his outstretched leg told him Jade had moved. He opened his eyes to see what she was doing and couldn’t believe them.
She was on one knee, glasses on her head, looking at him with love in her pale blue eyes.
“Peter Everett, will you marry me?” He looked at her with wild incredulity and let out a laugh that rang the length of the river.
“Yes Jade, I will.”
She had beaten him to it. Peter laughed and laughed and laughed. This was so typical of Jade’s joy in life, she wasn’t going to wait for him to ask her, she knew what she wanted and cared nothing for convention. As they clambered out of the boat an hour later, he showed her the ring he had bought. The tiny jewel sparkled fiercely in the dappled sunlight and she slipped it straight onto her finger, vowing to never take it off.
He fumbled self-consciously with the heavy watch she had bought for him. It felt awkward now, but he would grow to love it, would grow to love the reassuring weight that would be an anchor in the storms to come.
That day, they emerged from a chrysalis of clumsy youth. Jade had finished her masters degree, Peter his teacher training. She would be starting work for a publishing house in Newcastle in the middle of August and he would be taking up his first teaching post at a small secondary in September. They were adults, they were grown-ups, they were no longer students. They felt intoxicated with their own maturity.
They would spend the next day spreading the good news far and wide, running from house to student house, telling the friends that they had huddled around them, but this day, this shining golden day was just for them. They climbed slowly through the city, ambling through its narrow streets, floating in their own bubble.
They made love for the first time as an engaged couple, the sweet smells of the summer flowers drifting through the open window of their house. Jade’s father had bought a house in the city rather than pay rent and the pair of them had lived there for two years now. The house would become a wedding present from Jade’s father, and Peter could never recall any time happier than that he spent living there.
The day drifted on lazily – it felt though it should never end, such was its delicate beauty. They watched the sun go down over the castle and drank champagne on Palace Green. Waking together the next morning seemed like such a different experience than before. They had confirmed that they wanted to spend the rest of their lives together and the feeling of love and safety that gave them was immense. Peter watched Jade silently for five minutes before even moving, he studied every line of her face, could not believe that she was going to be his, that he was going to be hers. Her hair was tangled and knotted, but Peter could not remember ever having seen a greater beauty. They breakfasted on croissants and sticky jam and sat in a blissful, comfortable silence. They spread the news of their engagement fast and wide, happiness reflected from every party.
Their weeks of indolence, the limbo between student and professional, flew faster than either had imagined. Jade was soon making the daily trek in her tiny yellow car to the centre of Newcastle, and Peter was back in the classroom, cleaning the whiteboard and reading last year’s graffiti.
They were blissfully happy in those days. Their commitment to each other was such a serious thing, but it made them feel so free and joyful. Jade danced through her days at work; she was only a junior copy reader, but she loved the feeling of reading first drafts, the smell of the paper, heavy with correcting fluid from experienced authors, pristine and on impressive heavy watermarked paper from the newer writers.
Peter found that he could take a great amount of pleasure from his teaching, he loved it so much. There were parts of it that were miserable and frustrating, but the shaping, the moulding and the helping, tickled his soul and polished his heart. His colleagues in the English department were friendly and kind, helping with teething troubles and pointing his needs in the right direction. Not that he had many problems, and those that he did have melted away whenever he walked through the door of his home with Jade.
The pupils would tease him gently about his ‘girlfriend’. They would maintain the beautiful blonde he had been seen with was a sister or a cousin, they didn’t reckon that someone like him could attract someone like her. They always smiled as they said it.
Not that Peter was unattractive; he had long strong limbs that looked good in a suit. He had a floppy demi-quiff of brown hair and a narrow pair of bristly brown sideburns, that neatly framed a face that – whilst not classically handsome with its slightly beaky nose – was certainly appealing, with a twinkly sweeping charm.
The wedding approached with the force of a runaway train. Peter looked interested when he felt he needed to and made occasionally arbitrary choices between types of identical flowers and napkins. Jade and a wedding planner took care of all the fine details, though they both agreed on Durham cathedral being the perfect venue.
To Peter’s mindset, such a thing was an unobtainable dream, but Jade became so hooked on the idea that she made a few calls to family contacts, and once again, the world began to spin her way.
A very great deal of Durham’s beauty lies in the cathedral, thought Peter, as if it were an anchor for the entire city. From the outside it was always a mess of scaffolding and green netting as a perpetual cleanup was being performed, but stepping into it was like being immersed into a thousand years of history in one dizzying shot. But for the fourth dimension, you would be rubbing shoulders with the great and the good. Peter always liked the poetry of an idea like that.
As Peter waited patiently at the high altar, he looked at the rough stone pillars and blocks that felt older than any man-made things should. His eyes drifted lazily, as the rough Stonehenge of the cathedral body gave way to the delicate columns and flutes that surrounded his exalted vantage point. He felt as if he could have spent the rest of his life counting the tiny castles that they made and never reach the end.
Beyond the main altar is the chapel of St. Cuthbert where Cuthbert himself is buried, Peter had always nursed a secret desire to break the tomb open and smell the lilacs.
Peter had no religion to speak of, but during his time in the city, the cathedral pulled at his core with the power of gravity. War, heat waves, famine and Rapture could have been tumbling outside, but the cathedral would have remained the same. The temperature was constant, the air had a steady hint of incense, it was a place of permanence.
But not today. Today the cathedral was different, for changes had been wrought from within. Every surface, every hanging, every inch of the old wooden pews were festooned with a plethora of sunflowers. How Jade had managed to make it happen was something Peter would never know; he had a notion that the Archbishop of Canterbury was involved at some point in the chain, but like many grooms before him, Peter asked no questions.
A hush fell in the flowery chancel, and Peter turned his head…
This picture is big, it takes in a thousand years and more besides.
The black and white flooring around the high altar gives way to the rough stone of the rest of the cathedral.
Jade has progressed halfway down the aisle arm-in-arm with her father who is looking to the left and nodding at an acquaintance. She wears no veil or headdress and is carrying only a small bunch of three sunflowers. Her dress is so simple that it could have been made from a bed-sheet, no frills or lace just sheer white fabric.
Jade’s golden-white hair is tumbling about her, something sheepdog-esque about the utter disarray it is in.
Everything about her appearance should be wrong; she has dispensed with tradition as freely as her father has dispensed money – she is wearing a pair of sparkly trainers rather than high heeled shoes – but the congregation that day, had never seen anything or anyone more beautiful.
Her face is caught at an angle, not quite in profile. Her lips are a fresh fulsome red and are pulled back over her teeth in a sweetly infectious smile. Her face is oval in shape and though her features aren’t stunning in themselves, they are set with such perfect proportion below her large round eyes, that the wonder of the congregation seems well deserved.
One of the laces of her wedding trainers has come undone and is trailing on the ground behind her.
Peter’s greatest memory of his wedding was that of laughter. The sheer joy of what they were doing overwhelmed both of them. He started giggling as soon as he saw Jade, noticing her trailing shoelace. She laughed back as she saw him holding the biggest sunflower she had ever seen, ready to present to her. The mirth ribboned as Peter took three attempts to pronounce matrimony, and the imp inside Jade pointed her to nibble Peter’s lip as he kissed his bride.
The presiding clergyman – a Canon of the cathedral – confessed to the pair of them that he had never been to nor officiated at a wedding that spoke more of the joy of life and love than theirs. “Then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongue with singing: then said they among the heathen, The LORD hath done great things for them” he had said after the service.
“Do you know how to do the trick with the loaves and the fishes?” asked Peter by way of reply. “Or failing that, the water and the wine?” The Canon walked away, laughing even more.
The day was well documented by a hundred cameras and four hundred guests. It wound across the clock, the great hall of Hild and Bede providing ample accommodation. The speeches were long, but rich with humour and detail. Jade’s father gave a tender potted history of her life – her first words were “Biscuit now!” and her first dolly was an action man – and nearly choked when he spoke of ‘letting his little girl go.’
Peter gave a standard but eloquent thank you speech, and his elegantly dishevelled best-man-brother Ed spoke for a full ten minutes of the virtues of his sister-in-law and the vices of his brother.
The meal was roast pheasant with a raspberry confit – both Peter and Jade heard one of Peter’s elderly aunties asking why someone had served jam with the chicken – more of those sweet ringing peals. The dessert was a whisky crème brulee in a butterscotch sauce. Peter had a vague recollection of this having been his choice, although he wasn’t sure if those words had instead been applied to the colour scheme of the invitations.
Their first dance was briefly to ‘All along the watchtower’ as the DJ hit the wrong button, but quickly became the tender strains of ‘Waterloo Sunset’.
Peter held his wife on the dancefloor, he held her and shuffled her round, and they gazed at each other, with eyes open so wide as to take in the rest of their lives.
Suddenly it was one a.m., the guests were leaving for their billets and Peter’s bride was gazing at him with a wine misted smile.
It seemed like too luscious an evening to end there. A set of large doors that led onto the rolling banks of the college had been opened, and sweet spring scents were mingling with the loving cold that was gliding through the room. Peter wanted to walk with his wife beneath the stars before he made love to her beneath their own private heaven.
They strode down from the college, still in their wedding clothes, and walked along the deserted streets, cars slowing down to marvel at their beauty. They walked down to the river, taking pleasure in the gentle flow that would become a lolloping torrent in a few hundred yards. They walked up through the beautiful city and stood on the parallel lines of the Kingsgate Bridge. Just below was the spot they would yearly dwell in their boat, and looking over the edge they both fancied they could see themselves gently floating across the water.
Suddenly, Jade leapt up. She was drunkenly holding an orange bottle of Veuve Clicquot champagne and she clambered awkwardly onto the thin ledge of the concrete bridge, waving it at the stars. She stood, gazing up at the clearest sky she had ever seen, tipping her head back rowdily, and for a moment of horror Peter thought she was about to lose her balance and tumble into the river, but she did not.
If Jade had been able to record her feelings at that point she would have said that she had an urgent feeling of being in tune with the universe. She didn’t feel as if she could do everything, she felt that she was everything. She was the stars and the trees, the ground and the air. She stood on six inches of dried cement and grit, and let the wind blow through her hair and the moonlight drift through her soul.
2. Falling from grace
When she eventually fell, Jade fell forward not backwards. Given another chance to describe these moments, she would have screamed a sudden sickness, a nausea that swept over her and knocked her from the ledge. She fell painfully on her knees, fracturing a kneecap. Her head was in a vice, a metal band tightening, squeezing the life, even the thoughts from her.
It took Peter some heartbeats to realise what was going on. He thought the fall from the ledge was a dramatic jump and was laughing with wonderment at his fiery spark of a bride; but suddenly, her hands were around her head, pressing down on the crown of the skull, trying to release pressure and save her from the ache splitting her in two. Peter flapped wildly, tried desperately to pull her arms and hands away, but the strength that kept them there was beyond human.
Then it was gone. Her arms fell limp, clutched to the point of bruising by Peter’s powerful hands. Her head rolled sickeningly, and she looked up at him.
The stars are swirling, she thought, as her husband’s eyes swam in and out of focus. The stars are swirling and coming down to dance with me. Ursa, Betel, Crux and Virginis all fly to my hand. He’s made of his own stars, a trillion rolling flying boiling stars, hustling each other to make their own space, all of them themselves nothing but space.
He’s dimming, now, one by one his infinite stars are snuffing out. He’s just a fading outline, but still the stars fly to me, surround me, lift me, and they gather me up, make a shell for me, make a shroud for me, and now they are carrying me.
They will carry me further than I have ever been before, as far as anyone ever goes, that final journey will take me through the stars and beyond.
Jade rolled her eyes around and stretched out her arm, trying to reach across space. A harsh guttural sound gurgled in her throat, no words, only pinprick emotion. There was light in her eyes, more light than there had ever been before. She felt the tight swallowing sickness, a harsh ripple was stifled in her throat.
The light faded, and Jade Everett was flying away, her golden hair racked into one last desperate tangle.
He had been a husband for less than twelve hours, and now he was a widower. Peter felt as though everything he had ever been told, everything he had ever felt or known, was spinning away on the eddies of the wind.
It was raining gently, a soft pattering of the tiniest of drops that soaked Peter’s body faster than any rain should. Peter was crying, the salt flowing from eyes and running with the rain. Someone was behind him, someone was talking, someone was shaking him and then running, running away from the cathedral, running to the phone box sticking up from the Elvet like a battered red candle. He crouched, cradling his wife in his arms for an eternity. Someone tried to prise him away from her, reassured him, told him he could be with her.
His memory faltered. No longer were events a chain, no longer was his life the subject of cause and effect. He was on the phone calling his parents, he was on the phone calling her parents, he was looking on as the wedding dress was cut away from her body, he was hearing the phrases “Arterial aneurysm,” and “circle of Willis”, phrases that would haunt him for the rest of his life. He had stopped crying, he was crying again, he was pacing the halls and filling out forms.
Years later when Peter looked back to gain a more solid understanding of how he had lost his wife, he understood it like this: There had been a time-bomb in her brain, a vicious, snarling, brooding bomb that could have exploded at any point in the previous ten years. That he had met her at all was impressive, that she had lived long enough to get married was nothing short of a miracle. It was her joy in life, he decided, it was how much she was alive. She forced herself to live every day, and one day, just one day, she relaxed, and Death took a bride for himself.
He remembered seeing her body lying on its hospital bed, shreds of wedding dress still on her, remembered thinking that she looked so pale compared to her surroundings, remembered making himself think that this wasn’t his wife, that his wife was somewhere else, this was only her body. Everything that had made her the beautiful vibrant person she had been had gone, drifting away on the stars.
Peter had no previous experience of funerals before attending his wife’s. All four grandparents were still alive, had all been at the wedding. He watched numbly as, a week after the wedding, the same people that had been there were packed into the small parish church near to Peter and Jade’s house – Peter’s house now. He had insisted on carrying the coffin and had asked Jade’s father and uncle, and his own brother to help him.
When he looked around the church he realised how much he needed Jade in his life. He had been determined to organise every aspect of the funeral himself, knew that that was what a husband should do, but he looked around at the church, at the lilies now resting on her coffin, at the hymns he had chosen and it was wrong.
He had picked things that were so sombre, so unlike her. She would not have had lilies for her funeral. It would have been vibrant tulips of every colour, or else her beloved sunflowers.
He had insisted that he would make a eulogy, and had a typed sheet weighing heavily in his pocket, phrases like “Strength of spirit” and “Warmth of character”, pulling at the page. He realised now that that wasn’t Jade. He walked to the lectern and looked out at his family and friends – Jade’s family and friends, and he was transported across the years…
They were on one of their yearly boat trips, possibly the second time or maybe the third. Peter was rowing with long powerful strokes, and Jade was facing away from him, watching the world slip by.
She slipped a battered green book of poetry out of her bag and opened it at a marked page. From there, in an ever more dramatic voice, she began to read ‘Rime of the Ancient Mariner.’
She took such delight in the tale of the poem, loved the ever expanding and ever more weird story of the mariner and his crime against the albatross. All Peter could do was laugh as her enthusiasm rocked the boat. They sailed down the river, gaining more and more strange looks from the bank, and Peter remembered the words…
The bride hath paced into the hall,
Red as a rose is she ;
Nodding their heads before her goes
The merry minstrelsy.
The Wedding-Guest he beat his breast,
Yet he cannot choose but hear ;
And thus spake on that ancient man,
The bright-eyed Mariner.
“Jade loved that poem.” said Peter after reciting those two verses. “She loved the words and the story and the supernature.” He paused and gripped the edge of the lectern gently. “She loved the idea of someone not going to this wedding just because some crusty old sea dog had started telling a story.” He laughed, his first one in a week, and the congregation laughed too. “I remember thinking that if there had been someone outside our wedding telling wild stories that Jade might never make it in.” A stronger laugh here, the red raw wound of Jade’s passing growing faintly less so.
“Jade loved life with an intensity that I have never seen before. She was incandescent, she never cared what anyone thought of her, she is the only person in history that I know of to manage to deck Durham cathedral with a thousand sunflowers.” A bigger laugh here, tears of reminiscence. “And I loved her just as much as she loved life.” Tears had begun to stream down Peter’s face now, but he was barely aware of them. “I loved her so much.”
Forthwith this frame of mine was wrenched
With a woful agony,
Which forced me to begin my tale ;
And then it left me free.
Since then, at an uncertain hour,
That agony returns :
And till my ghastly tale is told,
This heart within me burns.
The rest of Jade’s day passed in a fog of tears, laughter and booze; Peter had never felt so alone. Not only was Jade missing from his side, but he could not believe that anyone could begin to feel the hurt that he was feeling. He found himself staring at his hands, turning them over and over, as if he could read some small detail of his future in there, but the lines and grooves made no sense. He always found romance in the notion that you could tell your future from your hands – he didn’t believe it, but he liked the idea. Peter often wondered; if it was true, then could you change your future by scarring your hands?
He raised his head and looked at the people around him. He looked through the windows of the room he was in – he wasn’t even sure where he was – and in the distance he could see the river flow down towards the point where he and Jade would sail. He could see the town square where they would walk and laugh, eating hot fried doughnuts. He saw himself and Jade looking over Framwellgate bridge, flicking acorns into it for some long forgotten reason. He could see them snuggled into a corner of the Market Tavern, enjoying thick black pints of ‘Old Peculiar’, Jade rejoicing in the treacle. Everywhere his mind’s eye took him, he could see himself and Jade enjoying a sliver of life. He had taken great pleasure in this before, had loved that the city held so many memories for him, but these reminders were now stinging barbs of grief, tearing at his skin. He couldn’t even bear to think about the house that he and Jade had shared, the house that was now his and his alone.
He looked again at his hands, balled them into fists and left the wake and Jade behind.
3. Homecoming
They were sitting round a rough wooden table sipping mugs of tea. The table was one that used to stand in the entrance to Peter’s college in Durham, but now it was inside the house Peter and Jade shared. This was odd, as the table was 20 feet long, but somehow they had got it into their house.
They were not talking, just enjoying each other’s company and silence. When Peter looked more closely, Jade was wearing her wedding dress, which was funny because he knew that that dress had had to be cut to bits when… when…
Suddenly, he realised, he knew what was happening, knew she was back and knew he might only have moments. He clambered onto the table, crawling across it, but now he was at the opposite end, and Jade was twenty, thirty, forty feet away. He ran down the table, gathering speed all the time, but when he reached the throne she had been sitting in, there was nothing there but the tatters of her wedding dress.
The bells of the cathedral began to ring…
Peter sat bolt upright in bed, a thin layer of clammy sweat clinging to his body. The dream lingered for long enough to twist into a thousand fragments of meaning limping round his head. This was not the first dream he had had and he suspected it wouldn’t be the last. He pulled aside the rough blanket in the room he was renting a mile from his school and stood to splash his face in the basin. He knew now, that whatever he did, he couldn’t stay here.
They had married just before Easter and Peter now handed his notice in as soon as he could. He could just about manage serving out till June. He didn’t have to go into Durham itself, but being in that environment, the environment that Jade belonged to, was difficult for him. She was standing on every street corner, sitting in every pub and crossing every road.
He instructed an agent to sell the house for him, had asked for Jade’s father’s permission – which had been given freely – to do this. He asked his brother to retrieve certain items and hired a clearance team to empty the rest; he never re-entered the house, never even saw it again.
He knew he couldn’t stay in Durham, but didn’t know where else to go. He had been born and brought up in Manchester, and though going anywhere made little sense to him, going back there made more sense than anywhere else.
In August he moved into a small house ten miles from the city centre, a three-bedroomed terrace on a quiet unassuming back street.
He didn’t have to worry about money; he and Jade had straightened out their finances at Jade’s dad’s insistence before the wedding, and this had included life insurance for the pair of them. He found it upsetting that it seemed he had been rewarded for losing his wife. He still had to work, knew that working would be good for him, but the prospect of taking another full time permanent teaching position was too difficult.
“Teaching can be such an emotional job,” he said to his brother Ed one night when they were holed up in a quiet pub not far from Peter’s new house. “You become so tied up with the lives of everyone you’re involved with. Its not even just the kids, its the people you work with too. Its so intense in that respect.” He gestured vaguely with the bottle of Bud he was holding. “I’m just not really up to that sort of thing at the moment.”
Ed snorted, seemingly in agreement. He had been staying at Peter’s new house with him for the past week, had been quite vocal about getting away from their mum and dad – Ed was two years younger and had just come home from university to work for a financial firm – but Peter knew that Ed was keeping an eye on him and was grateful for the company.
“So what will you do then?” asked Ed, emptying the dregs from a packet of peanuts into his palm and tossing them into his mouth.
“Dunno… I suppose I could go on supply and get with one of those agencies.”
Ed snorted again, took the empty bottle out of Peter’s hand and went to the bar for a refill.
Peter looked through the window that was now revealed by the movement of his brother. The pub was on a hill, the window facing down it. From here he could see for a few miles, a typical grey cityscape. He could see an endless grim viaduct, snaking into the distance, could see an industrial estate of heartless blocks and map-planned roads. He could see a gas-cooling tower, dropping slowly in the setting sun, he could see a round, soot stained factory chimney. He thought briefly of the kind of view he would see back in Durham, thick leafy green and stone carved history. He knew that Manchester had that too, but right now this was the view he needed, something different, something that wouldn’t remind him of Jade everywhere he looked. He could see the low sun glinting brightly off a distant window and suddenly it was gone as Ed sat down with replacement drinks.
“Yes, I think I’ll go on supply.” he said, and then took a long slow swig from his bottle.
Peter Everett stands alone at the front of an empty classroom.
He is wearing a pair of dark rimmed glasses with long rectangular lenses and a dark blue suit. The suit accentuates the length of his limbs and makes him look taller than he is.
The classroom bears the unmistakeable signs of neglect. The displays either side of the whiteboard are torn, and even at this angle we can tell that the desks are covered in graffiti.
Peter is casting his eye around his surroundings, appraisingly. His face isn’t set in the grim slab of unhappiness one might expect. He is seeing an adversary, seeing many adversaries in potential, but the classroom is his starting point, the place from which all will begin. Despite himself, he is looking pleased, he needs the challenge.
Behind him, the whiteboard is covered in black, blue, red and green graffiti – ‘school’s out’ is a common theme as is some ritual abuse for someone called Harry who appears to ‘like cock’.
Peter contacted ‘Ignition’ supply agency a few days after his conversation with Ed. They didn’t ask why he needed work at such short notice and he didn’t volunteer the information, they cared only about his bodily health and clean criminal record. They had said that they were sure they would be able to find him something, but Peter didn’t believe a word of it. The phone call that came with a six week stint starting on the first of September, was a shock. Peter accepted without thinking about it and had a meeting with the head of English a few days later, a tiny Scouse woman who seemed over the moon that he had two arms, two legs and could string a sentence together.
There had been an unfortunate accident, one of her teachers, Lauren Young, had broken her leg badly, skiing somewhere Peter had never heard of. The break was sufficiently bad to be taking a minimum of six weeks to heal. Cindy – the head of English – said that they were absolutely desperate and were so glad they had been able to find someone who would actually be able to take classes, like Peter. Peter said little during the meeting, which was conducted over two mugs of thin instant coffee in the deserted school staff room. He smiled, nodded and tried not to take any compliments too deeply.
He was surprised at how much free reign he was instantly given. He had a set of keys to a classroom, the alarm code to the school and the phone numbers of three senior members of staff who would be able to help him with any requests. Cindy said that the kids at the school were tough, but that was alright, because the staff were a real team, they really pulled together and sang 'from the same hymn sheet’. Peter found himself thinking that every school he had known had always said that, he thought it might be refreshing if they said “The kids are bastards and we can’t really control them, oh aye, the head’s a tosser too…”
Cindy came with him to ‘his’ classroom, dumped a dozen schemes of work and left him alone. Peter wasn’t even sure she knew his surname.
As she left, Peter pressed the palms of his hands to the painted grain of the door. He pushed it fully shut, turned and rested his back against it. This was something he’d forgotten, he loved this moment, the empty classroom, ready to be filled up. He drew in deep lungfuls of air, caught a slight scent of must and a heavy dose of something rotten. He followed his nose and made his way across the back of the classroom, letting his fingers drift across the scored surfaces of desks. He extended one hand down the back of a radiator and was able to pull out a small plastic sandwich bag filled with what probably used to be sandwiches, but were now a rotten, green furry mess of mould. Peter pulled the sleeve of his suit across his nose and examined them more closely.
“I dunno, what do young people eat today, looks like it’s rotten, macrobiotic I suppose. Give us ‘and with this will yer?” Peter turned to see a gargantuan man jerking his thumb over his shoulder at an old grey filing cabinet leant against a wall. The man had a faint patina of sweat and had clearly been struggling.
Peter shifted quickly across the classroom, grabbed one end of the cabinet and heaved. It was a big old-fashioned job – like the bloke at the other end – but it came up lighter than he expected. Peter had grabbed the wrong end and was forced to walk backwards through a series of heavy double doors. The school was quite deserted with few other people to contend with. The only person that Peter had seen, apart from Cindy, was a small dark haired woman lifting box files at the other end of the corridor.
“You Lauren’s replacement then?” asked the man at the other end of the filing cabinet.
“Erm… yeah, I suppose so, for a little while anyway.” Peter backed painfully into another set of doors.
“Nice girl Lauren, nice looking. Terrible what happened to her, they reckon she was going at 100 miles an hour as she came off her skis.”
“Blimey.” Peter didn’t believe a word of that, but this man seemed to take it as gospel. Peter tried to rearrange his face to suggest that he really was sorry that Lauren had had to be injured for him to get a job.
“Its just in here.” A sideways nod indicated the classroom that the filing cabinet was destined for. They struggled getting it in, and as they came through the door frame, Peter’s left hand caught part of the door lock that cut a long but shallow piece of skin from the back of is hand. Glancing at it, it looked fine, but by the time that the filing cabinet came down with a great thump there were thick dark blobs of blood along the length of the cut.
“Aaagh.” moaned Peter, wincing as he prodded the cut with the index finger of his right hand. The man at the other end of the filing cabinet seemed supremely unconcerned.
“You’ll be fine.” he said taking a closer look, “Just wrap this round it.” He threw him a clean hanky from his pocket and Peter accepted it gratefully. He took a long look at the man he had just helped. He was tall and heavyset, with slight jowls to his face that wobbled as he spoke and moved. His hair was gently fading from light brown to grey, but was still all there, quite closely cropped to his head. He was probably somewhere in his forties, although Peter wouldn’t like to commit to where. He had probably been quite handsome ten years ago, but he looked as if he had gone to seed. Peter glanced and saw no wedding ring, although this didn’t mean anything. He had taken to wearing his on his right hand rather than his left, it seemed wrong to abandon it entirely, and he felt a sudden stabbing pang as he thought about it.
“ Bernard, Bernard Quick.” The man proffered his hand and Peter had to simply nod to him rather than shake it.
“ Peter Everett.” Peter looked around the classroom. You could always tell a lot about a teacher from the state of their classroom. This one was quite bare, but extremely tidy. A few tattered posters round the room suggested that Bernard was a teacher of Business Studies.
“Right then, cheers for that mate, sorry about yer hand, dyer fancy a pint?” Peter was taken aback by the invitation.
“Erm… well.” Peter thought about feigning an urgent need to plough through the schemes of work he’d been given, and he looked back into Bernard’s eyes.
That was where his charm was, the eyes themselves were a pale slaty grey, but they twinkled with a sparkling magnetism that pulled at Peter.
“Yeah, alright.” said Peter. “I’ll just get my stuff.”
“You know where the staff room is? I’ll meet you there in ten minutes, I’ve just got to…” Bernard motioned vaguely back at the corridor, needing to bring some more items in from wherever the filing cabinet had come from.
That was the moment Emma chose to walk in.
4. Raking over the Past
She stands in the doorway, electricity coming from every pore.
She is five foot two, and has an air of dark attraction.
Her hair is raven black and hangs in large loose curls. She is wearing a low cut pair of jeans and a thin jumper with wide multicoloured strips. Between these items, at the hips, there is a slight stomach bulge. We can be sure from this picture, by the way that she is standing, that she knows and does not care.
If her face was a poem it would be written all in capital letters. Her features are large and fighting for space, but this does not make her ugly, it makes her interesting.
There is no doubt that this is a fascinating woman, the glare she is giving, directly at the camera lens, jumps out of the picture and shakes the viewer by the throat.
“Hello.” she said, entering Bernard’s room. She stood demurely, hands clasped in front of her. Peter looked her up and down and his first impulse was to apologise for something. He had no idea what, but such was the force coming from her that an inner reflex kicked in. He racked his brain desperately for where he might know her from, but he should have realised that no such racking was necessary; if you had met this woman you would never forget her.
She had seen the pair of them coming down the corridor towards her, struggling with something heavy. She couldn’t see him clearly, but she recognised him immediately, despite how long it had been.
She ducked quickly out of sight, into the classroom that had, five minutes ago, been an emerging source of pride and pleasure, but now seemed cramped, small and stuffy. She needed to face him, she knew that, but she had to compose herself first. She took a deep breath, ran her hand across one of the twenty-four computer screens in the room.
How could he be here? She thought she had left him behind forever, thought she had left behind the trauma that had been her involvement with him.
She caught her reflection in the computer screen and wiped her perfectly varnished left index fingernail across an immaculate eyebrow.
“Now.” she said to her reflection.
“I didn’t know that you worked here.” She spoke quietly, but even the traffic outside seemed to quiet itself so that she could be heard.
“I…” Peter started, but was interrupted by Bernard.
“I’ve been working here for a few years, when did you… what…?” Bernard’s twinkly-eyed charm had evaporated entirely, he looked wrong-footed and off-balance.
“I got the job in May, I’m the new IT teacher, did you not…” A sudden thought dawned on her face “I’m called Carter now, I got married last April.” She subconsciously pulled at the rings on her left hand.
“Riiiight,” said Bernard, visibly shifting mental gears.”Emma Carter. I remember seeing it written down now.” He looked diminished.
“Well, it looks like we’ll be working together then, I’ll see you in September.” She turned on her heel and left the classroom. Her shoes clip-clopped down the corridor for a full minute before Peter could speak.
“Well, I reckon you’ll definitely need that drink now. Staff room in ten minutes was it? See you there.” Peter waved at Bernard and went the same way as Emma.
Some time later, Peter found himself sitting opposite Bernard in ‘The Half-Moon Inn’ with a pair of pints between them. The pain in his hand had subsided to a dull itch, and he had been able to remove the makeshift bandage from it. The wound was angry and red, but he had cleaned it and it looked ok, maybe it might scar, he thought absently.
When they had met up in the staff room, Bernard had regained his bluff air of twinkly charm. He brushed over the arrival of ‘Emma’ and the event of wounding Peter, and let fly a barrage of comments about his dissatisfaction with this or that aspect of the school management. Now they were sat down, though, the façade seemed to crack and Bernard sagged visibly. He was twisting a beer mat round and round in his hand, and looked like a different person to the one Peter had carried a filing cabinet with.
“So then Bernard, what was all that about then? Emma I mean…”
“Well…” said Bernard, and he seemed to be relieved that he had been asked the question. ”It 'appened like this…”
It had been a few months ago, maybe a year. Bernard didn’t normally go in that pub, but he was glad he had today. He had a friend who worked behind the bar and had spent a few pleasurable hours sinking pints and passing the time, shooting the breeze, an American might have put it. At some point he had noticed Emma at the other end of the bar, drinking with a will, drinking to forget, Bernard had thought. Even through his haze of alcohol he could recognise that she was a very attractive woman.
He wasn’t sure that he had initiated contact, or if it had been her, but he knew that it had been him that had first bought them both a drink. She poured out her troubles, some problem with a fiancée, Bernard remembered now, he had presumed the relationship had folded…
Bernard for his part, poured out his troubles, he had been alone since his wife had divorced him at some point in the last decade, and he missed the companionship, missed the company and missed the sex.
This indiscretion had upped the temperature of their conversation instantly, Emma had bought more drinks, and their talk had grown more personal. The sort of woman Emma was, the sort of things she did, the sort of things she liked…
Then there must have been a taxi, Bernard supposed, because suddenly they were back at his place, clambering through the house, flinging clothes with wild abandon. They ‘did it’ right there on the living room rug, Emma moaning like a ‘good un’. Then they had gone upstairs and ‘done it’ again on the bed, falling asleep in post-coital exhaustion.
They had woken early in the morning, and Emma had left quickly, taking only a piece of toast as breakfast. She had left a number scrawled on a pad, but Bernard had never rung it. He wasn’t sure why, but he thought it better that they just left it at one night.
Bernard may have talked about missing the company, but in reality, he didn’t think he could share his life with anyone again, let alone his house…
“So that was it really, a drunken one night stand.” He polished off the remains of his pint and let out a long sigh. “I know I should have rung her, but it just didn’t feel right. I suppose she’s a bit narked, she’ll get over it. Another one?” He waved the empty pint glass and Peter nodded.
“Just a half though.” Peter watched as Bernard carried his heavy frame to the bar and bought more drinks.
He thought about the story that Bernard had just told him, thought about the callousness that it seemed Bernard had dealt out to Emma. It was not a nice thing he had done, but hardly the worst thing in the world. Peter decided to give his new acquaintance the benefit of the doubt, and greeted the full pint that Bernard brought back with a resigned smile.
5. September
“I love the smell of pencils in the morning.” There was no one else in Peter’s classroom as he said this, but he chuckled all the same. He laid the last of the 20 pencils he had sharpened in a plastic compartmented box and stood up, straightening his glasses and smoothing his suit. He turned to his now immaculately clean whiteboard and wrote ‘Wednesday 3rd September 2003’ in the top right hand corner. The first two days of the week had been staff training, where Peter had tried to familiarise himself with the school and his colleagues.
Peter hadn’t realised – until he had turned up on the training day – that the erstwhile Lauren Young, was due to be a year 7 form tutor, and everyone had assumed that as part of his 6-week stint with the school, Peter would pick up this duty.
If there was one thing that Peter disliked about teaching, it was dealing with the school’s youngest pupils. Once they were further up, they had discovered how the environment worked, but when they were fresh faced and 11-years old, they still thought they were in primary school, where teacher was their companion throughout the day and filled the roles of mother, father and tutor in one. They would need you, sticky fingered and wanting a hug, and Peter wasn’t interested. At least it was only for six weeks.
He locked his classroom and headed to the assembly hall. It was 8.15 and pupils were already beginning to throng the hallways of the school. He walked through with his long stride and noticed that he drew a few looks. He knew from experience that anyone new on the staff would be the subject of great interest from the pupils and his experience also told him that he would draw more than a few admiring glances from the females of the school. It would evaporate soon, familiarity breeding contempt, but it always sat uneasily with him. When he had been a scruffy student in jeans and a t-shirt, women had never given him a second look, but it was something to do with wearing a suit, it worked so well on him. He was wearing a slightly shiny black number today, and as he made his way to the hall, a few sixth formers, and a few of the younger girls, gave him lingering glances and collapsed into fits of giggles as soon as he had passed.
The young pupils were filing in to the school hall as Peter arrived, and he realised that in his haste he had let bitterness overrule him. They were being shepherded by various friendly-faced members of staff, and the looks of wide-eyed innocence and awe at being in the big school made Peter’s heart melt just a little bit.
Peter and the other year seven tutors had been asked to stand at strategic points around the hall, looking menacing and imperious. Peter couldn’t help himself but alternately give out mock harsh stares and grinning winks. He looked at the other tutors and saw Emma Carter across the hall.
He had only been half surprised to find that she was on the year seven tutor team; it was quite usual for new teachers to any school. There had been a meeting the previous day, Emma had given Peter a noncommittal wave, as if she couldn’t quite remember where she knew him from, and had then sat with him as she had watched the other tutors – long serving teachers all – file in to the poky classroom they were meeting in.
Peter looked around at the other four tutors that he could see round the hall. He wasn’t sure how old Emma was, but he knew that the pair of them were the only two even in vaguely the same age bracket. To Peter’s left was Daniel Palmer, a tall thin Maths teacher with hair that looked as if it was supplied by Lego – early forties at least. After him, skulking by the fire doors was Emily Chapman, the head of the science department, who had announced her impending fiftieth birthday seconds after meeting Peter and had then instructed him to only call her Emmy whilst defying him to tell her she looked anything older than 35. Between ‘Emmy’ and Emma were Chloe MacDonald and Sophie Griffiths, two retirement-age doddering old dears who, between them, seemed to run the music department in a manner that would have put Hinge and Bracket to shame.
Then Emma. Peter assessed her slowly. He looked closely at the way she had chosen to dress herself. The previous day, most of the teachers had come into school in a variety of clothing on the theme of jeans and t-shirts, but Emma had come in a sharp trouser suit and today she had had a serious attack of corporate lip gloss and bright red nail varnish. She looked like a samurai warrior ready to declare war against his Shogun; such was the effect of her war paint armour.
“Good Morning year seven, welcome to Smithfield High. As you all know, my name is Mr. Lloyd…” Without Peter realising, the 170 strong year group had filed in to the hall and taken their seats. Peter turned his attention in the direction of Zach Lloyd, the head of year, and tried to look like he hadn’t just been shocked by the sudden intrusion into his consciousness.
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