‘Newsflash, Geoff, having the horn for someone does not mean they’re going to get jiggy with you. Haven’t you heard? There’s an asymmetry in the universe.’ This last accompanied by a snide sidelong glance at Ruprecht, who does not react.
‘I don’t care,’ Geoff says. ‘Come on, Howard! Run away with her!’
Consumed by the urge to make a speedy exit, Howard walks right by without seeing her. Typical perversity of fate: it’s probably the first time in the last six weeks he hasn’t been thinking of her, hasn’t been half-hoping she might appear. He is maladroitly attempting to balance a stack of books while fishing his car key from his pocket, when he hears her voice behind him, cool as the breeze: ‘Well, well, so we meet again.’
She looks, if it’s possible, even more beautiful than before – although maybe it’s not possible, maybe it’s just that that level of beauty is too bright to be fully retained in the memory, any more than you can photograph the sun – dressed in a man’s white shirt in which her perfection appears so simply and ineffably that it seems to present an answer to any question or doubt anyone might ever have had about anything, so quietly overwhelming that Howard forgets he hates her, instead is suffused with joy, thankfulness, relief, at least until he realizes that the man’s white shirt probably belongs to her fiancé.
‘Been a while,’ she says, evidently unphased by his failure to reply.
‘What are you doing here?’ No sooner has he said it than the dreadful thought occurs to him that the Automator has drafted her in to replace him, invoking so many layers of irony he thinks his brain might short-circuit; but she tells him that she’s come to speak to the sixth-years about careers in investment banking, and also to have a word with Greg about the school’s portfolio. She pushes back a tress of golden hair. ‘How have you been, Howard?’
How has he been? Can she seriously be asking him that, after taking a hatchet to his life? Apparently she can. Her ocean-blue eyes await him with limitless concern; backlit by the sun, the contours of her face seem to glow, as though she is turning into light. And Howard can’t actually see a ring on her finger. Could it be that Fate isn’t quite done with him? Has she reappeared just in time to ride away with him into the sunset, or to present herself as a sunset for him to ride away into? Could it be that by some miracle everything might still turn out all right?
‘I’ve been better,’ he says gruffly. ‘We’ve had a time of it here lately. You heard about Daniel Juster?’
‘God, yes, it was horrible.’ Lowering her voice she says, ‘That awful priest… what are they going to do?’
‘Nothing,’ he says, shrivelling interiorly at the question. ‘They decided not to do anything.’
She considers this. ‘Probably wise,’ she says judiciously.
‘How about you? Anything new?’
‘Oh, you know…’ Her eyes dance over the brutal brick façade of the Annexe. ‘Nothing, really. Working. It’s okay. A little boring. It’s nice to be back here. I forgot how much I enjoyed playing teacher.’
‘Ever tempted to come back?’ he says, leaving a double-meaning there should she choose to pick it up.
She laughs melodiously. ‘Oh, I don’t think so. I’m not like you, Howard, I don’t have a vocation for it.’
‘The boys liked you.’
‘They liked staring at my tits,’ she says. ‘That’s not the same thing.’
‘I liked you.’
‘Mmm.’ She shields her eyes with her hand, turns her gaze onto the car park, the wintery trees. ‘Hard to believe it’s almost Christmas already. Time just goes, doesn’t it? Faster and faster. Next thing you know we’ll all be in a nursing home.’
Howard is getting increasingly frustrated with this conversation. Are they just going to keep going like this, being nice and charming and polite? ‘You know,’ he says, ‘we never got a chance to talk.’
‘Talk?’
‘I meant to get your number, after…’ He trails off; she gazes keenly into one eye, then the other, as if he’s raving. ‘I left my girlfriend,’ he blurts.
‘Oh, Howard. I’m so sorry. She sounded so nice.’
‘Jesus Christ…’ He turns his back on her momentarily so he can gnash his teeth, clench and unclench his fists. ‘Are you really doing this? Do you really expect me just to forget everything?’
‘Forget what?’
‘Oh, so you do, so you are, okay.’
‘I don’t understand what it is you want me to say.’
‘I want you to act like what happened between us happened!’ Howard shouts.
She does not reply, merely purses her lips, as if studying an untrustworthy fuel gauge on a long trip.
‘How could you have a fiancé? What kind of person does that?’ He is still carrying the pile of books from his locker; he deposits them on top of the car, where they totter and spill over the roof. ‘I mean, was anything you said true? Did you feel anything for me at all? Have you even read Robert Graves?’
She doesn’t respond; the angrier he gets, the more serene she becomes, which makes him angrier still.
‘Is this just what you do? Go around making people fall in love with you, and then dropping them, like it doesn’t mean anything? Like nothing leads to anything else? Like it’s all just there to pass the time, me, and those kids in your Geography class you got all het up about recycling and global warming, I mean do you care about any of it? About your job, even? Your fiancé? Do you actually care about anything, or is it all just one big game to you?’
She remains silent, and then impulsively, or with the appearance of impulsivity, she says, ‘We’re not all like you, Howard. Life isn’t black and white for everybody.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘I mean, not everybody has the ability you have. The ability to care. You’re lucky, you don’t even realize it but you are.’
‘So let me care about you! If I’m so good at it, why won’t you let me do it, instead of running away?’
‘I don’t mean me. I mean the children.’
‘The children?’
‘The boys. They like you. They listen to what you say. Don’t deny it, I’ve seen it.’
What the fuck? ‘Are you talking about teaching?’ Howard is flabbergasted. ‘What has that got to do with anything?’
‘I’m saying, not everybody gets to do something good. Those kids will grow up to be better people from being in your class. That makes you lucky.’
‘Oh wow, I never thought of it that way,’ Howard says. ‘Now I feel so much better.’
‘You should,’ she says. ‘I’d better go. Goodbye, Howard. I hope everything works out for you.’
‘Wait, wait –’ his head is spinning as if he’d downed a bottle of vodka; laughing, he seizes the strap of her bag ‘– wait, just tell me one thing – what you said at the Hop, remember how you told me that at your own mixer, when you were a kid, no one would dance with you? That was a lie, wasn’t it? Just confirm that for me, that it was just another lie?’
She shoots him a cold ugly look and pulls the strap free of his hand. ‘Have you been listening to a single word I’ve said?’
‘I’m sorry,’ Howard says brightly. ‘Goodbye, so. Good luck with the sixth-years. I’m sure they’ll be very interested to hear about your work, and all the nice things you can get for making rich old men that little bit richer.’
She steps free of him, holds his gaze a moment. ‘A lot richer,’ she says expressionlessly. ‘They pay me to make them a lot richer.’ With that she turns and walks away, into the school. Howard watches her go, possessed by a strange, hating euphoria; then, as he moves for his car, he chances to look up, and sees, from an upper window of the building, a handful of his second-year class – Mooney, Hoey, Sproke, Van Doren – gazing forlornly down at him, and his brief sense of victory is instantly and thoroughly replaced by a crushing sense of failure. He waves at them limply, and gets into his car without waiting to see if they wave back.