An Honest Deceit Read online

  My roommate, Phillip, gave me a hard time about all this. When I arrived back Phillip was lying on his bed, a vampish woman with wild long hair wrapping her legs around him from behind. His Morrissey quiff quivered as he raised a hand to greet me. ‘Maria,’ he said, looking round at her, ‘Ben’s here. If you ever need someone to worry on your behalf, Maria, this is the man. Look at him, he’s even worrying about what I meant by that.’

  Maria waved an elegant hand. As I placed my rucksack on the table he addressed her with a stage-whisper. ‘You want to get some pastries?’ he asked her. ‘A few Danish, a little Mochaccino?’ She shook her head, smiling coquettishly. ‘What about some cranberry juice? Top up those fluids?’

  I sighed at the showing off.

  ‘All work and no play makes Ben a dull boy,’ he announced. ‘Now, why don’t you come with us to the patisserie?’ he asked.

  ‘Because I’ve got to work, Phil. I don’t have time to pretend I’m a 19th century French aristocrat.’

  Phillip sat up straight, as Maria began lacing up her heels.

  ‘He’s tetchy,’ he said, to her. ‘Probably something to do with the girl I saw him spying on in the refectory.’

  Maria smiled.

  ‘You saw that?’ I asked.

  ‘I saw the lot. It was like watching a dog try to mount a railing.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You tell me what happened, then I’ll tell you what I mean.’

  I related to him the story of ‘my glance’. As I spoke Maria nosily gathered her possessions and he tried on three different types of boots. As she left he threw on a scarf, lit a cigarette, and blew a plume of smoke through the crack at our window.

  ‘She’s a twin,’ he said, as Maria closed the door. ‘I had a little kissy kissy incident with her sister in the cloak room at the JCR. I thought I was bumping into her a second time but in fact it was Maria. We get on much better though, you know? I think it’s to do with her being a linguist. She speaks Serbo-Croat. We’re going for cocktails later and her brother has a Hummer.’

  ‘Good for you,’ I said. ‘That’s great.’

  ‘It’s going to make hanging out at the student union a problem,’ he said. ‘I can’t tell them apart. One speaks French but besides that you can’t slide a playing card between them. It’s all about the man making bold moves though, isn’t it?’

  ‘You talking about my situation now?’

  ‘Maybe I’m talking about both situations. Either way, you need to be dashing.’

  ‘What does that mean? You want me to buy a tuxedo?’

  ‘No tuxedo,’ he said. ‘You don’t have the shoulders. But next time you see her you need to be bold, because any more staring and she’ll have you down as an Engleby in the making.’

  It was a bright sunny day just before the Easter holidays, and the still-nameless Juliette was sat reading by the hockey pitch, as the team ran through their motions. I started thinking about Philips typically confusing advice. I wondered how I could I be dashing by a hockey pitch. She didn’t appear to be in any danger - I couldn’t rescue her. But I knew I had to say something. I had a book under my arm, and I wondered if that would help. I sat on the other side of the bench she was on.

  She smiled at me, almost dismissively. But in that fleeting expression I saw something retained in her eyes.

  ‘Have you had the same thought as me?’ I asked. ‘That this might actually be the quietest place to study?’

  ‘No,’ she laughed. ‘This is somewhere I can come to stop thinking about my books.’

  ‘Except the one you’re reading right now?’

  She looked down and smiled. I laughed in return. I wondered if this is what dating would entail: a constant exchange of dry laughs. She lifted the book. It was Wuthering Heights.

  ‘Have you read it?’ she said.

  ‘I’m afraid not. I’m doing an English Literature course, and I’ve started to see all reading as work.’

  ‘English Literature! I’m so jealous. You do know that’s not work, don’t you?’

  ‘It must be, because it’s all I do. Look at how pale I am!’ I said, pulling my forearms out of my shirt.

  ‘You are indeed,’ she said. ‘I think I’ve been spending too much in my time on my own as well.’

  ‘Exams?’

  ‘I’ve started painting,’ she said, closing her book and turning to me. As she looked down at her hands I noticed the precision of her features. Sun was coming through the trees behind the pitch, making the hockey players into flashing silhouettes. Juliette’s flawless, too-white skin became a fine canvas for those sunbeams.

  ‘Landscapes?’

  She shook her head. ‘People.’

  ‘People that you know?’

  ‘Sometimes,’ she said. ‘Sometimes, people I want to remember.’

  I didn’t know what to say, and it was agonizing to let the moment slip through my fingers.

  ‘So are you locking yourself in your room for fear of being found out, and thrown out of here?’ she asked.

  ‘Exactly,’ I said, exhaling. ‘How did you know that?’

  ‘Because I get that feeling all the time,’ she said.

  ‘It’s good to meet someone I have that in common with,’ I said.

  Philip was elated by the news of this undeniable flirtation, and he paced around our room like a matador as we contemplated what I should do with Juliette’s phone number.

  ‘How can I call her?’ I said, hunching in the chair at my desk. ‘I don’t think I can call her.’

  ‘You are not a eunuch,’ he said.

  I looked up. ‘You what?’

  He pointed his two cigarette-clenching fingers at me. ‘Ben -look at me. You are not a eunuch.’

  ‘I know I’m not a eunuch, Phillip.’

  He slouched by the window sill.

  ‘It’s just, I see the situation here,’ he said. ‘You’re a virgin, right? You haven’t had your end away, but that’s no reason to give up. Just because it hasn’t happened, Ben, doesn’t mean it won’t, okay?’

  ‘Yeah. Sure.’

  ‘But I need you to believe, in your heart, and stop thinking like that.’

  ‘I’m not thinking like that. I’m thinking my roommate needs … to stop calling me a eunuch.’

  ‘Maybe I should talk to her,’ he said, peering at me from the side of his eyes. ‘You know, maybe I should bump into her and ask her out for you? Lay the groundwork. Tell her about my roommate who’s not a virgin and she’ll go ‘who’s this playboy she’s talking about?’ and then when I mention your name she’ll think ‘wow, this Ben sounds like a proper Casanova. Then we have her under our thumb.’

  ‘No, Phillip. Don’t do that. That doesn’t even make sense.’

  ‘You’re worried you’ll ask her out and she’ll say no and you’ll get burnt. But you gain respect, as a man, if you get your fingers singed. It’s humble, it’s beautiful.’

  ‘So I ask her out?’

  ‘Yeah. So we know she likes art,’ he said. ‘You should get her a ticket to the Egon Schiele exhibition,’ he said. ‘I can score a couple through the radio station. You can argue that they’re free, so it won’t even look like you’ve made any effort.’

  ‘Women don’t like you to make an effort?’ I asked.

  ‘Sometimes this is like trying to get Pinocchio to act like a real boy. So they want you to make an effort, Ben, but they certainly don’t want it to look like you’re making an effort,’ he said, putting his hands on his hips. ‘Trust me on this. Call her.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about Egon Schiele,’ I said. ‘I could get a book out?’

  He laughed, and stubbed out the cigarette.

  When I phoned the number she’d given me I expected no one on her hall to answer it. The voice that did pick up told me to hang on. I listened to a low buzz of static for two minutes. When Juliette did answer, she seemed surprised to have a caller.

  ‘Ben? I didn’t expect you to ring.’

&n
bsp; ‘Why not?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Well, I remembered that you mentioned painting. I’ve scored us a couple of tickets to the Egon Schiele exhibition - it’s in the campus art gallery and with you painting people -’

  I tried to remember the lines I had practiced. They sounded woolly now.

  ‘Yeah, I know about it,’ she said.

  I didn’t think for a moment that her curt response might be a result of her shyness. I assumed she was weighing up her options, mentally comparing me to the droves of other men that had asked her out that week.

  ‘I thought you might be interested.’

  ‘That sounds like fun,’ she said. ‘When shall we do it?’

  Three days later was my first date, with the future mother of my children. In the pages of my life, this day would be one I would return to read again and again.

  Perhaps I am merely viewing the date through the romantic shroud of the past, but Winter seemed to move in more quickly then. One morning I awoke to find the grass outside my bedroom window covered in an icy sheen. The air had a clean, glacial feel. I spent hours inspecting my skin before the date, convinced that a spot I hadn’t noticed would permanently disgust her. In the end I decided it was more important to be on time.

  As I walked to meet Juliette I noticed the square outside the university art gallery had become an ice rink. Bing Crosby was singing Jingle Bells from hidden speakers, the melody ringing clearly in the bright air. His warm tones were interspersed with the sounds of distant blades cutting the surface. Through the mist rising off the ice it looked like fireflies, wrapped in cotton wool, were circling each other as they skated. As I walked closer, the translucent sheet of ice reflected the imperious, neoclassical green dome of the library overlooking the rink. The library’s twin pillars were adorned with long adverts for the exhibition, which made it look as though two emaciated sketches were watching over the events beneath them. I suddenly had the sense that life was preparing a cushion for me, as I was soon going to fall into something. I looked for Juliette amongst the upturned collars and bright scarves.

  When I found her, watching the skaters from the side of the rink, I was struck by how precise she looked. Her dark curls poured over the fake fur of her lapels. As she turned to look at me I saw that her features were chilled by the wind, and her lips were sparkling. She turned to hug me and as I received her I dared not hold her for too long, for fear that I would betray something. I realized I had no idea what to say, or what to do with her.

  ‘I’m so excited to finally see this exhibition,’ she said, as we moved inside. ‘I’ve wanted to go for a long time.’

  ‘Then why didn’t you?’ I asked.

  She seemed amused. ‘I don’t know.’ She looked at me, as if anticipating my reaction to her next remark. ‘My Dad used to say exhibitions were a waste of time, just a way for some show-off to fleece the public of their money. I felt daft coming by myself, like I didn’t have permission or something.’

  ‘Well you can forget about him,’ I said. ‘Because you now have my permission.’

  She smiled. I got our tickets out and showed her them. ‘I mean, I’ve bought them now,’ I said, waving them in the air. ‘So it would be too late to turn back even if you weren’t interested.’ Her smile turned to a laugh.

  The exhibition looked full, judging from the mass of bodies pushing to get into the entrance. People sidled into the gap between two white walls, ‘Egon Schiele’ stenciled in bold black on the right hand side. Eager, lithe students mixed with the more cautious, discerning gallery goers shakily consulting leaflets. As we moved through the four small rooms I realized how ignorant I was about art, and about the protocol of a date. I had anticipated feeling this way and Phillip had told me, in this circumstance to just ‘do what I wanted, and act confident’.

  Juliette’s shyness seemed to vanish when she began to talk about the art. ‘His muse was often his sister, Gertie,’ she whispered. ‘He often painted her in a way that was considered pretty lewd.’ She stopped in front of one portrait.

  ‘Why do you think he looked at her like that?’ I asked, looking at the picture. In it, Gertie’s hands were sinewy, and she was pushing them towards the viewer.

  ‘I just think he painted what he saw,’ she said, stepping gently into a reverie that was sudden and beautiful. I wished I could enter its porous boundaries, be enveloped in its unique texture. ‘Women aren’t just the soft, dreamy muses that most artists paint them as,’ she said. ‘He wasn’t afraid to represent that. Which I like.’ Her cheeks had warmed into a rosy glow.

  ‘Has he inspired you?’ I asked.

  ‘I suppose so,’ she said.

  Her scent enshrouded me, drawing me closer to the fabric of her arm. I realized that her fingers were lightly placed on the crook of my elbow, as if we were guiding one another. It sounds so incidental, but it took some courage for me to allow us to keep touching one another. It felt intimate, to be caught in the tendrils of the next movement of her mind and body.

  Afterwards, as we moved towards the cloakroom, I said, ‘I’d love to see your paintings. What do other people think of them?’

  She moved forward to retrieve her coat from the attendant.

  ‘You’re the only one that knows they exist,’ she said. She looked behind at me for a second, and smiled.

  I took a mental polaroid of that instant, which I carry in my mind. At that moment I told myself that Juliette could not have smiled at me in that way if she did not think we could fall in love.

  TWO

  WHEN I DECIDED to become a teacher, I didn’t think for a second I would end up famous. I thought teaching was a way to stay out of the limelight.

  I first learnt that shy people shouldn’t be teachers, just after I gained my PGCE. I was sent to a special-measures school where the children were bigger, louder and more confident than I’d ever been. Somehow I learnt to quell my racing heart, my dry mouth, and ignore the sudden bloom of sweat that arose in my armpits whenever I needed to begin a class. During that part of your career, you do not believe that you can alter the world. Your sense of possibility is shaped by the sentiments offered by your supervisors, and the room they offer you to flourish in. I became a teacher because I wanted to help children overcome their shyness.

  Much to my surprise, I enjoyed a job that forced me to leave my ego at the door. I found myself developing odd little strategies that helped me connect with the children, which helped me to enjoy teaching them. With the younger children I’d often use different voices, and these sudden about turns would amuse and engage them. With the older children I learnt when to push and when to withdraw slightly, and in so doing how to bring them out of the shell. Gradually, I saw the classroom as less an arena of fear and more a den of possibility.

  I had been teaching high school students, at school called Cranley Wood, for a few months when this situation changed. I had been working under a diligent headmistress who was firm, but who clearly enjoyed running the school. I heard by email, on a wet Wednesday afternoon, that she was retiring and that she would be replaced by an ‘exciting, visionary’ headmaster called Paul Kraver. I wondered who would have written that, and decided it was Kraver’s voice we were hearing. The email added that he would not only lead this school but also its nearby affiliates.

  I had spoken to the headmistress only days before, watching my breath form in the cold while she smoked a cigarette, and she had told me her ambitions for the school. I wondered what had changed so quickly. A few hours later a terse email from Kraver told us all to be in the common room an hour early, the following Friday.

  In the intervening days dark rumors circled. The school became a foreboding place, where tempers frayed. I overheard a number of shouting matches, too distant to comprehend. A number of the older staff were sure they were about to be made redundant. During spiky exchanges in the common room one or two indulgently remarked that they wanted to leave, rather than some amateur lead them. But when some newer
members of staff were told they were being forced to leave the feigned acquiesce turned into something more hostile. I wondered if I would fall victim to a ‘last in, first out’ policy, and be back to square one in my career. Pupils became openly upset, complaining in classes about how they would soon lose a favorite teacher. The staff speculated that Paul Kraver had only got the job through a friend at the council, who would be the real puppet master behind the job, and that a slew of redundancies would help fund his reputedly enormous salary. But despite the strength of the fear no one was able to find out much about our new leader. We waited for Friday, exchanging scraps of half-verified information in the run-up.

  Early that morning I sat in an anxious semi-circle of sleep-deprived staff, in the common room, and we waited Kraver to make an appearance. The common room was, at the best of times, too small for us. It actually fostered a sense of community, as we didn’t have enough space to avoid each other. But today the room was full - the tatty chairs at the lunch tables all occupied, with some staff members even having to resort to sitting on the window sill. Our deputy headmaster, James, was washing up and telling everyone that Kraver wasn’t the usual, harried headmaster we were probably expecting. ‘I read online that he’s a media graduate, who somehow ended up running a private health care company,’ he said, suds flying into his hipster beard.

  ‘How does that qualify him to run a school, then?’ said the school nurse, sponging the cups with a towel.

  ‘Because it isn’t just a school now, is it? Not since the new government. It’s a franchise. A money-making venture. There’ll be targets to meet. And if they’re met, money will pour in. Then one day, it’ll turn private. It’ll be pay day for everyone - except us.’

  The school had recently merged with a primary school over the road, and both were now functioning under the title ‘Cranley Wood’. There had been quite a stir about this development in the community. This high school had, over the years, developed quite a reputation for being rough, with a few nasty incidents involving drugs and knives. But the primary school was known for being a most pleasant place. The rumor was that, following the merger, once the reputation of our school had improved this would be exploited by it charging high fees. There was a third campus being incorporated under the banner too- a sixth form college called The Eden Site, which was had just been built. The beginnings of an empire. Which this Kraver would seemingly run.