“Later,” she says, not looking at the flowers.
My heart sinks, but she kisses me quickly on the cheek, slightly crushing my tulips. And my heart soars.
But at the end of the day I take my flowers to the Eamon de Valera and as I stand in the doorway I see that Yumi is at the bar with Imran. I move toward them but then I stop, because Imran has one hand wrapped around her tiny waist while his other hand is giving her small tush a familiar pat.
She kisses him on the mouth, and then rubs her head against his shoulder, like a little cat that hasn’t gotten the cream, but expects to get it some time soon. Like she did with me. I quickly turn and walk out of the pub, holding the flowers so tight that I can feel the stems breaking in my fist.
Then Gen is by my side, looking at me with concern.
“She likes him,” he says simply.
“I don’t care.”
Gen shrugs. “She likes him long time. Since he began at this college.” He stares at me, searching for something else to say. “Sorry.”
“Thanks, Gen.”
“You okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“Come back inside, sensei. Have Guinness. Listen to The Corrs.”
“Some other night.”
“Good night then, sensei.”
“Good night, Gen.”
You’re so stupid, I tell myself, stuffing the flowers in the nearest trash bin. But for a few sweet moments there-dancing in that little club, Sunday morning on Primrose Hill, making love while her red suitcase stood guard-I honestly thought that I heard tomorrow calling.
Whoops, wrong number.
I see her. Rose, I mean. See her on a London street, see her in a place where she could never possibly be.
I am in a cab coming back from the West End. And suddenly there’s Rose-not a woman who looks like Rose. But Rose herself-the same face, the same patient expression she always wore when she was waiting for something. The clothes are different but she is the same girl. And although I know it could not possibly be her, for a long, dizzy minute, I cannot help believing.
She is waiting at a bus stop. I have to restrain myself from shouting at the taxi driver to stop and rushing to her side. I know that if I approach this woman, Rose will disappear to be replaced by some imperfect stranger. It isn’t Rose. She has gone and I will never see her again. At least not in this world.
Me get in touch with the dead?
That’s a joke.
I can’t even get in touch with the living.
14
I T’S MONDAY MORNING and my students are driving me nuts.
Zeng is nodding off at the back of the class. Imran is staring blankly at a text message on his mobile phone. Astrud and Vanessa are gabbing. Witold is trying to stop crying while Yumi tries to comfort him. Only Gen is looking up at me, waiting for something to happen.
I stand in front of them, waiting for my physical presence to register. Zeng starts snoring.
I clear my throat.
Imran taps a text message into his phone. Astrud and Vanessa burst out laughing. Witold starts weeping, burying his face in his hands. Yumi puts her arm around him. Gen looks away, as if embarrassed for me.
“Right, who’s got that homework for me?” I ask them. “Homework? Anybody?”
By the way they all shift in their seats and avoid eye contact, I can tell that none of them have done it.
Usually I would let it go. But today the lack of homework makes me wonder what I am doing here. And also what they are doing here.
“Can anyone remember what the homework was?”
“Discursive composition,” Yumi says, handing Witold a tissue. “Giving information and your own opinions on something.” We stare at each other. “Very formal style,” she says.
Very formal style? Well, that’s right. But I don’t know if she’s talking about discursive composition. Or us.
“What’s wrong with you, Witold?”
He shakes his wizened Polish head.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing’s wrong?”
“No.”
“Then why are you crying?”
Yumi puts a protective arm around him. “He misses his family.”
Witold starts sobbing harder, his shoulders shaking and his nose all snotty.
“My wife. My children. My mother. So far away. This place is so…hard. Oh, this is a hard place. The Pampas Steak Bar is a hard place. ‘Hands off the Falklands, Argie. Tell Maradona we are going to chop his hands off, Argie.’ ”
“You spend ten years trying to get a visa to this place and then you miss your family?”
“Yes.”
“Well, in future be careful what you wish for, Wit. Because you might get it.”
Yumi glares at me. “He has a right to miss his family.”
I glare back at her. “And as your teacher I have a right to be treated with a little respect. That means no nervous breakdowns in class. It means no mobile phones in class. Thank you, Imran. It means you treat this place as somewhere to study rather than a place to get forty winks.”
“Forty winks?” someone says.
“New idiom,” says someone else.
Zeng is still fast asleep. I crouch next to him. His skin is soft and smooth with just a few wispy black hairs on his upper lip. He doesn’t look as though he shaves more than once a month. I put my face close to his ear.
“Would you like fries with that?” I hiss and he awakes with a jolt. Vanessa and Astrud laugh, but stop when they see my face.
“Why did you come to this country, Zeng?”
“A better life,” he gasps, blinking furiously.
“If you want a better life, then try staying awake in class.” I give him a cold smile. “A little less effort in General Lee’s Tasty Tennessee Kitchen. And a bit more effort at Churchill’s International Language School. Okay?”
“Okay.”
Then I get the little bastards to write a discursive composition. The subject is developments in science and technology and whether these will affect mankind positively or negatively. As they scribble away I wander among them.
“I want to hear both sides of the argument,” I say. “For and against. Negative and positive. Link your points with expressions such as, some might say…others might argue that…there are, however, some risks such as…”
Usually they would ask for advice and kid around with me but today they are all too frightened or too angry to ask for my help. And it makes me feel blue to think that they don’t like me anymore.
When the bell rings they all get out of there as fast as they can. Apart from Yumi. I am packing my things away when I feel her standing by my desk.
“Don’t take it out on them,” she says.
I don’t look at her.
“I’m sorry, Alfie.”
“Sorry for what? There’s nothing to be sorry about.”
“I had a good time with you,” she says. “But you frightened me.”
“How did I frighten you?”
“The flowers. The flowers frightened me. They made me feel you want-I don’t know. Too much.”
I finish stuffing my books in my bag and zip it closed.
“Don’t worry about it,” I tell her. “That’s the last of the flowers.”
Josh and his new girlfriend are at that stage of their relationship where they want to share their happiness with the rest of the world. I don’t understand why happy couples can’t be happy in private. Why do they need the rest of us to validate their happiness? Is it that they don’t really believe in what they have found? That they suspect it might be a mirage? Why can’t they just fuck off and leave us alone?
Josh and Tamsin-the new girlfriend, who happens to be the client he was so keen to rush back to the last time we met-are having supper at her place. It’s their coming-out ball as an official couple, so I can’t get out of this dinner party, although God knows I have tried. I came up with a couple of really good excuses but Josh kept giving me alternative dates, the cunning bastard. The only way to get out of it would have been to say to him, oh, just fuck off and die, Josh-I never liked you anyway. Which does cross my mind. But I can’t say that because Josh is my best friend, the only link to the past that I have left, and I am afraid of losing him.