The Lessons
Naomi Alderman’s debut novel, Disobedience, was winner of the Orange Award for New Writers 2006, and in 2007 she was named Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year and one of Waterstone’s 25 Authors for the Future. She also writes online games, is a graduate of the Creative Writing MA at UEA and lives in London.
By the same author
Disobedience
The Lessons
NAOMI ALDERMAN
VIKING
an imprint of
PENGUIN BOOKS
VIKING
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
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First published 2010
Copyright © N Alderman Ltd, 2010
Epigraph copyright © C. P. Cavafy, reproduced by permission of the Estate of C. P. Cavafy
c/o Rogers, Coleridge and White Ltd, 20 Powis Mews, London W11 1JN
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologizes for any errors or omissions and would be grateful to be notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future editions of this book.
All rights reserved
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book
ISBN: 978-0-14-191766-5
Contents
Prologue
SECTION 1: The Lies
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
SECTION 2: The Trappings
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
SECTION 3: The Lessons
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
For my grandmother Lily
Like the beautiful bodies of those who died before they had aged,
sadly shut away in a sumptuous mausoleum,
roses by the head, jasmine at the feet –
so appear the longings that have passed
without being satisfied, not one of them granted
a night of sensual pleasure, or one of its radiant mornings.
‘Longings’ by C. P. Cavafy, translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard
Prologue
When I returned from San Ceterino late in the afternoon, I found that Mark and his friends had thrown half the food in our kitchen into the swimming pool. Through the clear water I could see a panettone dissolving into a shimmer of red and green crystallized fruit, while the poolside tiles were smeared with yolks and broken shell fragments. A sodden pizza lolled lazily on the bottom of the pool, flapping at one edge like a mottled tongue. Jars of artichokes and peppers had spilled an oil slick across the surface of the water. Ripe tomatoes and peaches, two bunches of grapes, a selection of wax-paper-wrapped cheeses and cartons of milk were strewn across the underwater tiles, still intact. A poached salmon had broken into fragments, chunks of it floating by the pool filter. And among the food, various other forms of debris: a plastic garden chair, cigarette ends, a soggy paperback still barely afloat.
A quiche was ground to eggy mush on the tiles; I nudged it with the toe of my plimsoll. I looked around. No one in sight. I’d only been gone since 10 a.m. Mark must have called his friends almost as soon as I left. Faint strains of television chatter drew my attention to the converted stable block behind me. Yes. Deal with the kids first, then find Mark. I walked down the gravel path towards the stable block’s lounge. The television was louder here, and I could hear occasional laughter and bursts of Italian conversation.
I pushed open the door. The room was stiflingly hot. Clothing and half-empty bags of snacks were strewn over the floor. A CD had apparently been used as an ashtray. Three nearly naked brown bodies were draped over the sofas – Stephano and Bruno were wearing only shorts, feet dangling over the arms of one sofa. Stephano’s sister Magdalena was lying on her back on the other, wearing a pair of jeans and an orange bikini top, a carton of popcorn balanced on her stomach. Three pairs of eyes flicked up at me, then back to the television screen. Wile E. Coyote was attempting to heave a boulder over a cliff, little realizing that Road Runner was right behind him. Road Runner beeped. The coyote dropped the boulder on himself. The three Italians laughed and I found myself momentarily astonished that there should still be people who watched Wile E. Coyote cartoons and laughed out loud. But they’re children really. Stephano’s the eldest and he can’t be more than eighteen.
‘Right,’ I said, ‘party’s over. Time for you to be going.’
They looked at me, then back at the screen. Wile E. Coyote had purchased a box of ACME dynamite. Any moment now it was going to explode in his face.
I picked up a handful of clothing and threw it at the boys.
‘I said, time to be going.’
Stephano pouted at me.
‘But Mark said we could stay. Watch TV.’
‘I’m sure he did, but now I’m telling you to leave.’
Stephano looked at me sullenly, trying to gauge whether I had any power in this situation. Still, he was young and I’d been a teacher for long enough to know how to return the stare. If he’d been a year or two older, he’d have faced me down, sworn at me. But then, if he’d been a year or two older, Mark wouldn’t have been interested.
Stephano stood up with an irritated shrug and pulled his T-shirt over his head. Bruno did likewise and they began to gather together their belongings. I noticed Bruno slip a couple of DVDs into his bag as he packed, but said nothing. Magdalena couldn’t find her top. I brought her an old T-shirt of mine and she made a moue but accepted the shirt. The three of them headed off down the hill.
After they’d left, I found that I was shaking. In the bathroom, I splashed some cold water on my face and stared at myself in the mirror. I looked older, tired and very white, my stubble showing darkly against my skin.
I walked around the pool to the pine summer house, always so pleasantly fresh even on the hottest days. I
smelled the herbal scent of pot. The three kids had probably just smoked a joint, but judging by the state of the pool Mark had taken something a little more potent. The door of the summer house was ajar. Just inside the threshold, clothing was scattered on the rattan mats. I recognized the trousers Mark had been wearing when I’d left for work in the morning, and a T-shirt that was too small to belong to anyone other than Magdalena. The smell was more intense inside the summer house, that telltale thick musky scent. They’d had a party, then. Of course.
The main room was disordered; Mark’s remaining clothes were piled in a little heap on the table, they’d thrown cigarette ends into the old music box, the floor was wet and two of the cane armchairs were on their sides. No broken glass though. That was a blessing considering the last time. I found Mark where I expected, in the little bedroom, naked on the sticky sheets. He was lying on his back. I thought he was asleep at first, but when I stepped into the room, intending to cover him with a sheet, he opened his eyes and sat up.
He was drunk of course, but of course not just drunk. His cheeks were flushed, his eyes large, his movements jerky and uncoordinated. He moved his head back and forth, trying to bring me into focus. At last, he smiled.
‘Oh, it’s you, James, you –’ He broke off, looked around him and continued after a moment. ‘You’ve been gone for days. We had to hide, in here we had to hide. There was danger outside but it’s better here.’
‘There’s no danger. I’ve only been gone a few hours. Only since 10. It’s 6 now.’
He smiled at me again. A stupid smile. He shook his head.
‘No … I know. You’ve been gone for days. That’s why we had to make preparations, you see, we had to make everything ready.’
‘Ready for what?’
He shook his head and touched one finger clumsily to the side of his nose.
‘Mark, what happened to the pool?’
He blinked at me.
‘The pool, Mark. It’s full of food.’
He looked at me, trying to keep his face solemn, but his mouth kept twitching and he broke into giggles.
‘It was soup. We made soup! We were hungry, so I said let’s make the biggest soup in the world! You haven’t eaten it all, have you? Have you?’
‘No, I …’ I rested my thumbs on my temples and massaged my forehead. ‘I’m very tired, Mark. You should rest too. We’ll talk in the morning, OK?’
He looked at me, suddenly sly.
‘Are the boys here? You should send them. I want … I want the boys here.’
I felt a tightening around my head, as of a strap being pulled closer and closer.
‘I’ve sent them home. Their parents would be worried otherwise. You remember what happened before, don’t you? You shouldn’t keep them up here so long.’
He muttered something, too low for me to catch.
I turned to leave.
‘I said, you want me all to yourself, then!’ Mark shouted after me.
I stood with my hand on the door.
‘No,’ I said, ‘I want to call the pool man to get the mess you’ve made cleared up so I can get to bed before midnight. I have work in the morning.’
‘You do,’ he said. ‘You do want me to yourself. That’s all you’ve ever wanted. The only reason you’re here is that you think one day I’ll run out of other people and you’ll still be here waiting.’
I felt a blush begin to rise.
‘That’s enough, Mark.’ I sounded, even to my own ears, less certain than I had talking to Stephano.
‘It’s not,’ he said. ‘What do you go to that job for anyway? Just to pretend that I don’t pay the rent and the bills and the housekeeper and the bloody pool man too. This is what you’ve always wanted, isn’t it? Since Oxford all you’ve ever wanted …’
I turned my back on him and walked out of the summer house. He raised his voice as I left but I thought of other things and closed my ears to him.
He was sorry later. I’d known he would be. It’s the same every time.
I heard him padding around the kitchen in the early hours of the morning. He’d been crying – his eyes and cheeks had that squashed, overripe look – but he doesn’t cry in front of me any more. He’d showered – his hair was still damp and falling into his eyes. He blinked at me through his fringe and apologized over and over again until I could hardly bear to hear him keep talking.
I made coffee and we sat in the living room. We talked a little about the house, the trip to the mountains we’d planned but which he kept putting off. It was a peace offering. He wore me down, as he always does. My anger dissipates as soon as we begin to speak, and I remember how he used to be. He knows this.
After we’d talked for a while, he said, ‘What I like about having you here, James, is that you remember me. You know. No one that we see here knows. To them I’m just some English bloke with too much money who drinks too much and smokes too much and takes too many drugs. But as long as you’re here, as long as you remember how I used to be, I’m more than that. Do you see?’
I did see. I’d known all this for a long time. We’d talked about it before.
When the sun began to rise, we took cans of cider into the orchard, disturbing clouds of spindle-legged crane flies as we walked through the grass. There are benches placed at odd intervals – some whim of Mark’s from the days he still imagined holding frequent parties here. But he never had the wood properly treated and many of them have already rotted through.
We found one which still had all its struts intact, next to a rusted oil drum in which he’d once hoped to plant creeping violets. It stood empty now, half-filled with rain water, another reminder of Mark’s problem – or at least one of Mark’s definitions of his problem: that his ambition has never been quite large enough to fill up his money. We sat in silence as the sun came up, taking long pulls on our drinks and listening to the cacophonous cackle of birds awaking in the trees.
Eventually Mark said, ‘I want her back. I want Daisy back.’
I said, ‘I know.’
He said, ‘She’s all I want, all the time. Even when I’m … all the time.’
I said, ‘I know.’
He leaned closer and I put my arm around his shoulder. I kicked my legs against the oil drum. The noise of it was louder than I’d expected – a wild clanging, as though I’d struck a huge brass gong. Above us three geese honked, flying in triangular formation across the blue-white sky.
SECTION 1
The Lies
1
First year, November, third week of term
For me, it began with a fall. Not, as Mark might have said, a fall from grace. Nor was it the hopeless, headlong capitulation of love. That came later. It began simply with a tumble on an icy path. I stumbled, I tottered, I teetered, I fell. There’s no disgrace in falling. Everyone falls. But I have found that getting up has proved more difficult than I could have anticipated on that icy path in Oxford long ago.
I ran, in the first faint hum of early-morning light, along a quiet path by the river. I ran for pleasure. Night had licked the leaves of the overhanging willow trees with frost. The path was muddy, but the mud had frozen into crackling shards. My breath came in quick gasps, achingly cold, steam-snorting.
I ran in steady, effortless, piston rhythm. A full-body rhythm: my feet on the path, my thighs bunching and loosening, vertebrae and diaphragm, flexors and extensors, all the mechanisms of the human body running smooth and true. The blood thumped in my ears. I was cold but I did not feel it. I ducked my head under a low-hanging branch of ice-prickled hawthorn, moving without thinking. Running emptied me of all thought. This was why I ran. It was three weeks since I’d arrived in Oxford, and things weren’t going to plan.
There had been a plan. At least, it seemed to me there had been. My sister Anne, an Oxford graduate, had told me what to do. She had come to our parents’ house, my mother had roasted a chicken for dinner, so that she could tell me these things. I was to join societies, I was to participa
te in activities, I was to work extremely hard. Oh yes, Anne had said, leaning forward to wrench a leg off the chicken carcass, and I was to make friends with the right sort of people. She herself had fallen in with the Labour Club during John Major’s premiership, when the Conservative Party lay bloated and dully throbbing, like a dying star. Her boyfriend, Paul, a pale and blinking specimen, worked for the Labour Party. Great things were expected of him. I’d do well, Anne said, to find similarly influential friends. Our parents smiled as we talked. My father poured another half-glass of wine. Anne bit into her chicken leg down to the white bone and gelatinous gristle at the joint. I noticed that I was thinking of Anne. I quickened my running pace a little. My breath became more ragged. I rounded a bend, and thought vanished into a new vista of half-thawed ice-river.
Oxford is beautiful; its beauty is its plumage, its method of procreation. The beauty of the dream of Oxford, of spires and quiet learning, of the life of the mind, of effortless superiority, all these had beguiled me. Oxford was a tree decked with presents; all I had to do was reach out my hand and pluck them. I would achieve a first, I would gain a blue, I would make rich, influential, powerful friends. Oxford would paint me with a thin layer of gold.
In my first meeting with my tutors, Dr Strong and Dr Boycott, I had taken down the list of books on the smooth, white page of my notebook in clear fountain-pen strokes. The very thought of it thrilled me: an Oxford reading list in preparation for an Oxford tutorial.
One of the other men in the group – Ivar, a Norwegian – said, ‘Isn’t this rather a lot? For one week?’
Dr Strong and Dr Boycott exchanged a glance. The rest of the students looked down at the swirling green and gold curlicues of the carpet. We knew that Ivar had shamed us.
‘We expect a lot, Mr Guntersen,’ said Dr Boycott at last. ‘That is why you are here.’