That went on to the floor too.
‘And this?’
‘My white v-neck top,’ I said, testily.
‘But what has it got?’
‘Long sleeves.’
‘Right.’ On to the floor.
‘And what about this?’
‘My grey top.’
‘Does it by any chance have long sleeves?’ Jess said, sarcastically. ‘Oh, look, yes it does, now there’s a surprise.’
She reached into the wardrobe again, pulled out another top. ‘Tell me Ceri,’ Jess said, turning to me, ‘do you see a theme developing?’
‘Maybe,’ I said, petulantly.
‘Far be it for me to criticise, but you’d think a person starting a new life would start off with a new wardrobe too.’
‘Oh yeah, says Mrs “I’ve Been Wearing The Same Clothes Since I Was Twenty”. What was that, fifteen, twenty years ago?’
Jess, surprisingly, laughed. Surprisingly because usually she’d throw something at me. ‘Ah, but you see, I haven’t spent however many years working on fashion magazines. You’d think some of it would’ve rubbed off.’
‘Whatever,’ I said, flopping my arms around. ‘I still need help deciding.’
‘I understand, no, really I do. Should I wear the round-neck long-sleeved top or the v-neck long-sleeved top? Those decisions will keep a girl up all night.’
‘Do you want some chocolate cheesecake or not?’ I replied.
‘Ceri, it doesn’t matter what you wear,’ Jess said. Ever the mum, she started picking up the tops she’d dropped on the floor. ‘I mean, when I was lecturing you, did you ever notice what I was wearing?’
I thought about it. I didn’t remember now what she used to wear. And I can’t remember at any point thinking, Wow, she should not be wearing that. ‘Suppose not.’
‘My rule of thumb for dressing for lectures has been,’ she went back to my bed and got in, taking custody of the remote controls again, ‘to wear what makes you comfortable. Cos people will notice if you’re fiddling with your waistband or bra strap.’
‘But do you think they’ll have a problem with the fact none of my tops ever cover the waistband of my trousers and that there’s always this strip of midriff showing?’
‘No, sweetie, I don’t think they’ll be sat there going, “Who cares what Piaget said, look at that midriff on her”.’
I went to my wardrobe, opened the door, took out my favourite long-sleeved top, the white one with a slightly plunging v-neck. ‘I think I’ll wear this one with my dark blue jeans,’ I said, decisively.
‘Good, you look lovely in it,’ Jess replied, without looking away from Corrie.
‘Trainers or shoes?’
‘Shoes.’
‘Why?’
‘Because you’re going to wear your trainers anyway.’
‘Funny.’
Jess deigned to tear her attention away from Corrie and rested it on me. ‘I’ll tell you what you should wear, though.’
‘What?’ I glanced anxiously at the open wardrobe.
‘Your bloody glasses, you vain madam. You won’t be very authoritative if you’re squinting at everyone.’
‘We do not talk about them,’ I hissed. ‘They do not exist and we do not talk about them. Ever.’
‘OK, Mrs Magoo.’
‘Grrr . . .’
Jess was right about one thing, I didn’t really need help in deciding what to wear, I’d hauled her over here from Horsforth because I needed company. Someone to fret at. I didn’t know Jake and Ed well enough to unravel in front of them. And it didn’t work down the phone, so that ruled out most of my London friends. The only person it could be was Jess. She knew that, which was why she came, I guess. She was my surrogate boyfriend in such situations. It had to be said, I wasn’t usually the fret out loud type. I was the gnaw on my fingers, stare into space, sometimes scrawl out a list type.
But then, I’d never taken such a huge leap of faith before.
Whenever I’d started a new job before, it’d always had an element of sheer terror because I’d always moved upwards on the career ladder: first from junior sub-editor to sub-editor, then to senior sub-editor, then to chief sub-editor and then, finally, to contributing features editor. My career jumps had always been into a position I wasn’t sure I could handle. Naturally, I’d lie awake panicking about being sacked; being ‘found out’. In comparison to this, what I’d felt then was a mere smidgen of terror. A small quantity of fear that could be beaten into submission by ordering a desk tidy and sending my first email. With this lecturing lark, a desk tidy wasn’t going to cut it.
What did I think I was doing?
This was just one idea on a page. I’d written down what I wanted to do on a piece of paper, as per instruction in one of my self-help/follow your dreams/Oprah books. Write down all your dreams. If you could do anything, what would it be? Go on, write it down. Even if it’s ridiculous, write it down. No one else will ever see it, so what’s the harm if you put it down on a piece of paper?
What’s the harm? I’ll tell you the harm. Once it’s in blue and white, once it’s written down, it seems possible. Not quite so ridiculous. Not quite so airy-fairy. And, once something seems even remotely possible, it starts to grow. Like a baby growing inside you, your idea – your dream – grows, takes from you, feeds off you, gathering strength, slowly but surely becoming part of you until it’s ready to be born. To become something tangible in its own right. Then, without realising it, nothing else seems as exciting or important or worthy. Everything you do comes back to your dream. Comes back to whether your current life is helping to feed, nurture and strengthen your dream. Next thing you know, you’re pacing the floor of your bedroom fretting about giving your first lecture. Me, lecturing. For real. Full-time. Well, seventy-five per cent of the time, but full-time in the sense of what my title was and what I was paid to do.
‘If you don’t stop wringing your hands you’ll have no skin left on them,’ Jess commented.
I glanced down, my hands were twisting and twisting themselves together as I paced the floor. I hadn’t even noticed.
I went over, climbed into bed with Jess and pretended to watch Corrie.
‘We’d better not move about too much,’ Jess said. ‘Ed and Jake will think we’re having some kind of love tryst.’
‘I should be so lucky,’ I said. It’d been a while since I’d had sex.
‘You would, to get me.’
‘Ha-ha, ha-ha, ha-ha.’
‘You would be lucky to get me. Haven’t you heard how hard it was for Fred to convince me to go out with him?’
‘Yeah. He said “hello”, you were his.’
‘You’re a cheeky cow, D’Altroy,’ Jess laughed.
I slid out of bed again. I couldn’t settle. My insides were in flight, my mind was in flight, my body needed to be in constant motion too. I started to pace the floor of my bedroom again. I was lucky, this bedroom seemed to have been constructed for fretful pacing.
‘I feel like I’ve made the biggest mistake of my life,’ I admitted suddenly.
‘Bigger than moving in with Whashisface Tosspot?’ (We never spoke the name of the man I lived with for a year, because that would be asking for him to get in touch. That would be like standing in front of a mirror and saying ‘Candyman’ three times when you’re the star of a film called Candyman. In other words, that was asking for the unholy to blight your life again. Or, in even fewer words: that was looking for trouble.)
‘Yes, even bigger than that catastrophe.’
I met Whashisface Tosspot when I was doing my journalism masters in London. We were together for two years and I spent most of the time wondering why I was with him. I moved in with him at the end of college, when we’d both been looking for somewhere to live and he suggested we get a place together. I’m still convinced he used some kind of Jedi Mind Trick on me because I’d stood there, looking at him, thinking, ‘You what?! Move in with you? We are so not on the same page, are w
e?’ but ‘All right then’ came out of my mouth.
Jess had laughed when I told her he’d asked me to move in with him. When I told her I’d said yes, she’d hung up on me. She’d previously spent the better part of a month coaching me into dumping him, and that night was the night I was supposed to do the deed. The night I was supposed to rid my life – and therefore Jess’s life – of him for ever. Instead, I came away, having agreed to live with him. Having, basically, further ensconced him in our lives.
‘At least when I realised he was Prince Of The Undead I got out . . .’ I said to Jess.
‘Eventually,’ Jess cut in. ‘Very, very eventually.’
‘Yes, all right, eventually. But the point is, at the time I didn’t know it was a mistake. Not really. I kind of thought I was doing the right thing. At least I convinced myself I was doing the right thing. With this . . .’ My voice trailed away as terror took over again.
‘With this, you’re feeling lost. And that’s only natural. But look at what your life was like before. Remember how unhappy you were? Almost everyone you met or talked to wanted you to sort their lives out; all those dramas you were involved with. I couldn’t believe half of them and as you know, I watch all the soaps. You couldn’t untangle yourself from all those lives. But you can start again here, can’t you?’
Jess was right on that score. I had managed to embroil myself in the most ridiculous dramas when I was down in London. None of them were mine, though. Not one of them. When most people heard I was leaving, they’d gone into shock. Not because they’d miss me but . . . well, put it this way, when I went to resign, my boss had paled, she’d lost all her natural colouring and her whole face had become a study in horror. In fact, she’d reminded me of that hideous picture, The Scream, but with more hair. She’d stared at me from across her desk, her thin but muscular face contracting and convulsing as she struggled to speak. ‘I thought we were friends,’ she’d finally managed in a shocked whisper.
‘I just can’t do this job any more,’ I’d replied, neatly avoiding the ‘friends’ issue. ‘I’m sorry. It’s nothing personal.’
‘Couldn’t you have come to me before? Talked to me? I thought we were friends.’
Just because I know that your husband has to call you ‘Mummy’ before he can have sex, and just because I know you had a fling with your husband’s sister, doesn’t actually mean we’re friends. It simply means I know too much about you. You and the rest of this office. In fact, the rest of this city, I thought darkly. And that was how it was. Somehow, some way, I’d become the person everyone came to tell their secrets to. People would often sidle up to my desk, say, ‘Ceri, can I have a word?’ in a desperate manner and my heart would skip a beat. Initially, I’d thought something big and bad had happened. When I realised this was rarely the case, my heart would still skip a beat because it might well be the one time when something hideous was wrong. I’d get up from my seat, follow them to the smoking area outside the building with my heart racing in my chest. ‘What’s up?’ I’d say.
They’d launch into some tirade that they’d been too chicken to direct at the cause of their rage. I’d listen, nod, go, ‘Ah, right,’ in the required places, then when they finished I’d follow them back to the office, knowing that they felt better for having got that off their chest but being none the wiser as to what it was all about. I was Sounding Board/Vent Your Spleen At/Share Your Secrets With Woman and I’d been looking to shed that persona when I started following my heart’s desire. I didn’t want to do that any more. I had to get my own life. In fact, I had to get a life. Hence the Commandments. All right, so I’d broken a couple of them with Claudine and Mel, but that could be rectified, all I had to do was not get involved.
‘I suppose,’ I mumbled, in response to Jess’s comment cum question about how I could start again up here.
‘Ceri, you’re a natural control freak so it’s equally natural that doing something you’ve not really done before is going to unsettle you. Or freak you out.’
I started making the eeey-orr sound of a woman hyperventilating.
‘But, but,’ Jess added quickly, ‘so many people spend their lives wishing and wondering, “What would it be like to live my dream?” You’ve done it. You’re doing it. That takes a particular type of courage. You wouldn’t believe how many people wish they had your type of strength. Or could get out of their rut and take that chance.
‘But the thing about you most people would love to have is your ability to appreciate chocolate as much as me. Speaking of which, didn’t you lure me over here with the promise of chocolate cheesecake?’
I stopped in my floor-pacing tracks. Oops. ‘Now there’s a funny thing about that. You’ll laugh. You’ll really laugh . . . Jess, put down that remote control . . .’
‘You will be all right, you know,’ Jess said later. She was back in her Wellingtons and mac, Fred was waiting outside in the car with the engine running. ‘There’s only one thing you really need to remember tomorrow and every day after that.’
‘And what’s that?’
‘The students don’t know that you don’t know everything so, if they ask you a question you can’t answer, just bullshit. That’s how I got through my first year of teaching.’
She hugged me and left.
chapter five
Life Orgasm
Elephants stampeded across my stomach as I walked around before the lecture started, leaving four-page handouts on the desks. To say I was nervous was like saying Madonna is a bit of a pop star. Things hadn’t got better in the time that had elapsed between Jess leaving last night and this morning. If anything, I’d got worse. I’d started to have wild nightmare-like fantasies and vivid visions about what would go wrong. Which was one of the reasons I was putting handouts on the desks before the lecture.
Most lecturers dispense handouts as the lecture progresses, but I’d already seen the potential pitfalls. Literally.
Scenario One: I pick up the pile of handouts, ready to give it to one student for them to pass on, I trip, I fall and find myself lying face down in a pool of paper.
Scenario Two: I ask the students to come up and get them, there’s a stampede, someone knocks over my drink – necessary so my tongue doesn’t Velcro itself to the roof of my mouth – and all my overhead projections are ruined.
Scenario Three—Anyway, there were quite a few scenarios. I’d actually forgotten how vivid my imagination was. I’d begun to think it’d been blunted over time, taken up as it was with visualising Cupid sorting it out so me and Angel could end up together. But no, when I was in need of truly nightmarish scenarios, there was a rich vein of horror just waiting to be let.
I was putting out handouts in a room that was situated at the top of a building right in the middle of the All Souls campus. This block was an octagonal with a paved over quad at its centre where students lurked and lunched. The room I was to teach in wasn’t huge, not as huge as I’d expect after yesterday’s foray into the land of the giants. Light streamed in from the arched-top windows, leaving pools of light around the room. The ceiling was quite low, surprising considering the windows. The floor was still parquet, scuffed slightly, obviously well-trodden ground with bits more scuffed than others.
The forty or so chairs with little desks attached to one side were set out in a kind of arc. Behind me hung a white board which I had to bring my own non-permanent markers for. Above and behind the chairs was a wall to wall two-way mirror because this room doubled as a psychology lab and next door was an observation room. Thankfully, there was a heavyweight blue curtain that could be drawn across the mirror so I wouldn’t have to worry about looking at myself for two hours or there being someone else observing me lecture for two hours.
I sat on the edge of my desk. Just stopped. For a second, stopped. Took time to breathe. To breathe and think about what I was doing. What was to come.
And it happened. Total peace descended upon me. At the very core of my soul, a celestial being touched me and I f
elt peace. I was peace. Pure peace. Suddenly I was flooded with power and joy and happiness. All I’d yearned for when I’d accepted this job. I was complete. Whole. This was it. I was there, on the brink of it. On the brink of a life orgasm. I’d only ever felt this sense of pureness when I’d orgasmed. Right in the middle of an orgasm, you are nothing but pure emotion. Nothing else exists except that one moment of sheer, unadulterated bliss; when your body and mind give themselves up to immaculate pleasure. That’s what I’d been chasing when I gave up my life in London. For that moment, sat on the desk, I felt it. How life was meant to be. How life could be if I carried on with this.
The first student arrived five minutes before the lecture was due to start. Tall, malnourished thin, long greasy hair, wearing a baggy jumper. He was the type of guy you’d expect to come in last to the lecture, but no, he came wandering in, nodded a hello at me then sat himself at the back of the class.
Next came a girl who was very money. Chatting on a chrome phone, dark brown hair cut with very expensive scissors, the kind of clothes I used to see all the time on the pages of the pricier magazines I worked for. She smiled at me, but wasn’t going to finish her conversation until the lecture started. A chunky lad came next, Scouse, again with long hair, surrounded by a gaggle of good-looking women, all of them laughing at something he’d obviously just said. He grinned at me as he walked over to the far corner of the room, sat himself under the large window, and the women sat at other seats around the room.
More of them poured through the open gash of the door: a blonde with a tight perm; an older woman with short blonde hair and petite body; an older man who had ‘pervert’ scrawled across his scraggly beard; another older man who had ‘narrowminded Thatcher lover’ written in his eyes; a woman with black plaits right down to her bum; a man who put me in mind of a Wham-era George Michael, more and more until the room was full with about forty students.
I put on a charming, welcoming smile for them all. Hoping I looked confident, a natural, as if I’d been doing this for millennia.
OH SHITE! my brain screeched.