“There’s been some mistake,” I say. “My advertisement was for students who want to learn English as a foreign language. Wasn’t that clear? I’m not looking for students who want an A level in English Literature. Sorry. I honestly thought you were calling for somebody else. Some-I don’t know-Brazilian, possibly.”
“Some…Brazilian?”
“I don’t even know why I said that.”
Her smile fades away.
“You’re not qualified to teach English to A level standard?”
“Well, I am. But that’s not-”
“I’m thirty-one years old. I was thirty-one on Christmas Day.”
“Well-happy birthday.”
“Thank you. Twelve years ago I was doing really well at school. Top of the class. Straight A student. All that. Then I had to drop out.”
This is more than I need to know. I stand up. She remains sitting.
“I’ve got two A levels. French and Media Studies. Very good grades.” She looks at me a little defiantly. “I’m not stupid, if that’s what you’re thinking. And I’ve got money. What I need is an English A level so that I can go back to school.”
“Well, that’s great, but-”
“I know the course I want, I know the college I want. If I get that English A level, I can study for my BA at the University of Greenwich.”
I stare at her.
“Go to night school,” I tell her.
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I need a private tutor. I need to be more flexible than night school would let me be.”
“And why’s that?”
Her pale, pretty face darkens, as though a cloud has suddenly passed over it.
“Personal reasons.”
I let my voice go all firm and commanding. Playing the teacher. Which is sort of ironic, when you think about it.
“I’m sorry to disappoint you, Jackie. I really am. But I’m not teaching anyone A level English. Not you or anyone else. I’m teaching English as a foreign language. And you don’t need that. Do you?”
She makes no move to get up. I can see how disappointed she is, and I feel a stab of compassion for this overdressed, undereducated young woman.
I like her. I have always liked her. I just don’t want her for a student.
“If you take an old man’s advice, Jackie, qualifications are just meaningless pieces of paper.” Trying to make my voice all jaunty and friendly. “They do you no good in the end. Believe me, I know.”
“That’s easy for you to say. Because you’ve got them. They’re not meaningless bits of paper to me. They’re a way out.”
Vanessa’s sleepy voice drifts down from the top of the stairs. “Alfie? Come back to bed. I have to go soon.”
I don’t usually entertain at home. I’m lucky that the sales are on.
Jackie Day stands up. She seems to see me for the first time.
“What kind of a teacher are you anyway?”
Sometimes I wonder that myself.
On the first day of the new year my father comes around to pick up the last of his stuff. This is it. He is taking the final traces of his existence from this house. It should feel more traumatic than it does.
But with the shabby white van he has hired sitting outside the house, it feels anticlimactic, like this has all been dragging on for much too long and everybody wants it to be over.
My mother doesn’t even bother disappearing. She doesn’t come into the house while my old man is here, she stays out in the garden with Joyce and her grandchildren. But she doesn’t run away either. She stays in her garden with her friend.
As my father lugs boxes down the stairs I stand in the living room watching my mum and Joyce and Diana and William through the window. I am afraid that Joyce is going to barge into the house and corner my father with one of her impromptu interrogations.
Who is this young woman you live with? How old? Will you marry? Do you want children? Do you think you are a wise man or an old fool? Is this girl just a gold digger? Is it about more than getting your end far away?
But she doesn’t. Joyce just stays out in the back garden with my mother, planting lilies in patio pots, moving shrubs that have outgrown their space, preparing for the new season as the two children gently brush the morning’s fall of snow from evergreen shrubs and conifers.
“January,” Joyce had barked at me. “Busy time of year for garden. Time to get smacking. The early bird is always on time.”
“Catches the worm, Joyce.”
“You know what I mean, mister.”
According to Joyce, it is always a busy time of year for the garden. And I can hear her voice now, surprisingly gentle as she murmurs to my mother, and although I can’t hear her words, I am certain that they are not talking about my father. That feels like some kind of victory.
I turn to watch my dad coming down the stairs with the last of his things. It is a box of old vinyl albums. I can see Four Tops Live! and Stevie Wonder’s I Was Made to Love Her and Gladys Knight and the Pips’ Feelin’ Bluesy.
“Aren’t you getting a little old for all that baby, baby, baby stuff?” I say, nodding at the box of Motown records in his arms, wanting to hurt him.
“I don’t think you’re ever too old for a little bit of joy,” he says. “You believe in a little bit of joy, don’t you, Alfie?”
And I hate him so much not because I can’t understand him, but because I understand him so well. He is my father, he will always be my father, and I am afraid that there is much of him in me.
Our lives feel closer than I care to admit. All those nights in rented rooms with women who keep a suitcase by their bed and talk in their sleep in a language you can’t understand. All that sneaking around, all those little lies, all that settling for something that you know in your heart is only second best.
Yes, I believe in a bit of joy. These days that’s pretty much all I believe in. But I have this fear that, for me and my old man, those rented rooms are the only home we will ever know now, the only home we will ever deserve.
Then he is gone, bumping awkwardly out of the front door, while in the back garden I can hear the laughter of the women.
Part Two
19
JACKIE TURNS UP ON OUR DOORSTEP when I am in the park with George. My mum lets her in, gives her a cup of tea and biscuits, tries to make her feel at home. My mother will let anyone into our house. It’s a wonder she hasn’t been murdered by now.
“She’s in the living room,” my mum says. “Nice young girl. Dressed a bit-well-tarty, perhaps.”
“Oh, Mum,” I say, sounding as though I have just broken my Action Man.
“Well, she said she had an essay for you,” my mother says breezily. “I thought she was one of your students.”
“My students are all foreigners, Mum.”
I peer through the crack in the living room door. There she is on the sofa, still dressed for dancing or double pneumonia. Strapless top, minimal skirt, heels that could take someone’s eye out. Sipping her tea, looking at the pictures on the wall, all these arty black-and-white photographs of working men that my old man collected when he started making some money.
I think about making a run for it. But she might start stalking me. Best to get it over with.
“Hi,” I say, coming into the living room.
“Oh, hello.” She smiles, trying to get up, and then deciding against it with the tea and biscuits on her lap. “Look, I’m really sorry to bother you but-”
“It’s okay. But I thought I made it clear that I’m not an English teacher.”
“Oh, you made it clear that you are an English teacher,” she says and laughs, making a little joke of it. “You just don’t want to teach me.” She places her tea and biscuits on the coffee table and picks up a manila envelope by her side. She hands it to me.