Caravan Story Page 13

  It is three o’clock when the teacher calls pens down. I’ve done almost nothing. Tomorrow we will be focusing principally on our characters, says the teacher. He calls for our work—Hand it down, he says—and each student hands what they have written to the table in front of them, and so on, until the work forms little piles on the tables at the very front of the class. The teacher collects them up. He will select one or two for workshopping tomorrow, he says, when we will then have some actors to help bring our characters to life: some of you may have already seen them arriving. He’s looking at me, and he’s smiling. With my back up straight and both hands flat on the desk I smile back at him. No, I’m not the teacher’s pet, but I don’t think I’m the troublemaker either. The teacher puts the big pile of papers on his desk. He looks at his watch—and just then the end-of-school bell rings.

  three

  Judd appears in the doorway, throwing a basketball back and forth from one hand to the other. We’re going to go out and play for a while, to ‘blow away the cobwebs’, the teacher says. Down the corridor and out the door at the end into the playground, my eye keeps scouting everywhere for her. Perhaps they’ve gone? Perhaps Judd was sending them away? I will die if I don’t see her soon, I think—it is not desire, I don’t even know any more what desire means, I just want to talk, ask her again what she makes of all this, see if she is as confused and beaten by it all as me. No, I think, as we cross the playground to the basketball court: no, be careful, that’s not what you want to say, that’s not what you want to say at all. You want first to take an interest in her work, all the things she’s seen and done, you want to listen carefully, patiently, before telling her with no great fanfare about yourself. How you got selected because your Laburnum story was good, how you’ve proved yourself willing to learn; you’ll tell her about the paradigm and the importance of structure and all the other things you’ve been taught.

  I want to keep going on with these thoughts, would happily keep rehearsing them in my head all afternoon, but now we are at the basketball court and Judd is dividing us up into teams. No-one wants to do this, it is obvious from the body language, but no-one knows how to say no to him either. We’ve been up half the night, we’ve only had one meal, all we want now is to rest, to sleep. Even the brave faces on the teacher’s pets are caving in: we’re dog-tired, we’re hungry; give us a meal and put us to bed—tomorrow we’ll be better off for it. But where are we going to sleep? I look at the players lining up opposite me: they don’t know either. Are they going to put us to sleep here in the school, somewhere in town—are we special enough to warrant hotel rooms of our own? Or are we going to get back on the bus and travel all night again to—where? No. I’m trotting back down the court now, to take up my position in defence. Surely I’ve not got it all wrong? That we are out on ‘day leave’ only? That we’re only filling in time now till the bus arrives, perhaps a real school bus that must first drop off its real school children? And that then we’ll be put on it and taken back to H——, just in time for dinner, and then wake up tomorrow and do it again? And what will we go back to if we do? Will it be a ghost camp? Or already filled with new arrivals? Will Polly still be there, her red slash of a mouth, her frightened eyes? Judd has blown the whistle, someone grabs the ball from the air and throws it in my direction. Someone in front of me catches it and throws it back. It’s a farce. No-one has the energy to take it seriously. I’m sure I’m not the only one thinking about the sleeping arrangements. The ball goes back and forth like this for some time—you’d swear the two teams were throwing it to each other—until suddenly, out of nowhere, someone flings the ball towards the ring at the opposite end and scores a goal. A muted cheer goes up. Judd retrieves the ball and runs back to the centre of the court with it.

  It is almost by accident that I then look back at the classroom and see the figures moving around inside. I can see the teacher, near the window, pointing, and moving past him as a dark shadow two figures carrying a table. It’s the actors. They’re pushing back the furniture to make a performance space for tomorrow: we’ll sit in our chairs and watch them bring our characters to life. Then from these dark shapes one in particular seems to step out of the shadows towards me. It’s her. She puts down her end of the table and stands next to the teacher, talking to him. He points variously around the room then turns and points out the window. She turns too. The low-down late afternoon sun lights her up, all straws and magentas, her hair ablaze. She looks out towards me. I look at her. Then I crash to the ground. Someone has thrown the basketball at my head. I was supposed to catch it. You were supposed to catch it, says Judd, standing above me.

  I’m taken to the sick bay and left there with a minder, a middle-aged man with a goatee beard and silver-framed glasses. Judd says I can stay there till dinner. Dinner, I think. It takes a while to staunch the bleeding. I lie on the narrow bed—it smells musty, and very faintly of stale urine—with a twisted tissue up each nostril and a damp dishcloth on my forehead. My minder sits on the chair beside me. You should have been watching, he says. I let it go. Then after a very long pause, I say: I saw my partner, at the window. There’s an equally long pause. Do you think we will sleep here tonight? I ask. He thinks I mean here in the sick bay, he and I, together. I don’t mean here, I say, I mean somewhere in the school? He shrugs. He seems to think I am beneath him. I wonder, I say—half to my minder, half to myself—if we are any more special than the others, the ones we left behind? He doesn’t answer. You know, I say, I saw Polly yesterday afternoon (Yesterday? Was that yesterday?) going around the camp; maybe she’d just drawn all those names out of a hat? My minder looks at me—it’s not a pleasant look. This is the last place he wants to be—he could be out there, making an impression (On whom? The factotum, Judd?) but instead he’s in here, looking after the klutz. I study the side of his face for a while: You’ll go far, I think.

  We don’t speak again. It must be an hour or more spent like that, turning the dishcloth over, dabbing each nostril with a tissue, my minder staring intently at the door, before Judd comes back to get us. He opens the door, asks how I am feeling, and says we’ll be eating soon. My minder leaves first, anxious to put this humiliation behind him, then, just as I get to the door, the damp dishcloth still around my neck, Judd suddenly turns and pushes me back inside. He has a look almost of horror on his face. I shouldn’t be doing this, he says. He thrusts a tightly folded piece of paper into my hand. I unfold the note. It’s in her handwriting. Meet me in the gym at eight, it says.

  With my bruised face and this message in my head it’s hard to concentrate on or really engage with anything that follows. I watch it all from far away, counting down the minutes, wondering what I will say to her, what she will say to me. I leave the sick bay with the note folded up in my pocket and follow Judd and the minder down the corridor. It’s getting dark outside, it must be about six o’clock now, or later—we’ve in fact been in the sick bay for hours—and a gloaming light falls through the windows on either side of the main corridor. We’re heading back towards the classroom; we turn left at the main intersection; Judd and the minder are talking now, I can hear snatches of what they’re saying—it’s about story, structure, the set-up, what we learned today and what we will do tomorrow—and as we approach the next intersection and the stairs I can see the light from a room spilling into the corridor. At the top of the stairs all the class are gathered: this is a few doors down from our classroom; they have obviously been told to wait there for Judd’s return. They all step back. The minder joins the group and blends immediately into it; I stand a little off to one side. Judd takes up a position in front of the nearest classroom door and, playing with a bunch of keys, addresses us directly. Okay, he says, there are three rooms for sleeping: 212, 213 and 214. This is 213. He takes a key and opens the door, sliding it back with one hand while reaching for the light switch with the other. The fluorescent lights inside flicker on. We all push forward towards the doorway and the head-high windows along the corridor.
There are no tables and chairs inside; all across the floor in an interlocking pattern are about a dozen single mattresses with sleeping bags or blankets on them. Judd gives us time to take in this scene then he flicks the light off in that room and opens the door of the one opposite. We won’t bother about who sleeps where, he says, smiling: I’ll let you sort that out later. He flicks the light on. The same again. It’s the same in 214. This is where Dean and I will sleep, he says, pointing into that room, and tonight our guests will be in here too. Our guests, I think: where are our guests? We move down the corridor. The next room is locked and dark, inside are all the tables and chairs from the other rooms, stacked almost to the ceiling. We pass our classroom; it too is locked. All right then, says Judd, let’s eat!

  We reach the last room in the corridor, the biggest of them all in this wing. All the lights are on inside. There are tables arranged in two long rows with chairs on either side. The actors have already sat down to their meals: I see her, three places down from the far end of the table near the window. She has her back to me. She’s not sitting next to Andrew, he’s sitting on the other side a few seats down from her and now, as I enter the room along with the other writers, he looks up, sees me and smiles. I smile awkwardly back. I know she will turn around any minute, I’m trying to look but not look; I see Andrew lean down the table towards her, obviously telling her I am here, but just at that moment Judd is calling our attention to the two big tables of food parked under the classroom whiteboard and I am forced to turn my back. I look at the whiteboard and the writing on it. Please form a queue and help yourself, it says. There is an arrow pointing down to the food. I join the queue, and look back over towards her—but now she has her back turned to me again. The teacher enters: he’s changed his clothes, had a shower, I can smell his aftershave even from where I am standing. He stops to chat to a couple of people in the queue then moves over to the tables. Andrew gets up, the teacher shakes his hand. She still won’t turn around.

  I take a plate and choose from the things laid out on the table: pastas mostly, and salads, and French sticks sliced and buttered. Did Judd make all this? I take my plate and sit down near the front of the table closest to the door—I don’t know why but I can’t go close, I can’t go up and tell her: Here I am. I bend over and eat my meal. One sausage roll for lunch—I have never been so hungry in all my life. I keep glancing at her face in half-profile; I can just see her nose, her lips, her chin. Has she seen me, is she waiting for me to go over? Why should we be so distant? We who were once so close? There are jugs of water on the table—some plastic, some glass, all different—but no alcohol. So this is what it means to be professional? I pour myself a glass of water and take a sip. The teacher has joined the actors’ table with his plate of food and he in turn is joined by the usual bunch of sycophants who lean towards him and laugh at his jokes. He’s off-duty now—charming, ebullient—sharing his own stories of his student theatre days: There were plenty of actors around better than me!

  I keep looking at the side of her face—I can see she’s not laughing but is she smiling at least? She must be smiling. Can she afford not to? Judd is the last to fill his plate and now he sits down at my table on the opposite side a few places down—not directly in my line of sight but close enough for me to think it is deliberate. He smiles at the person next to him and shares a quick joke then starts on his meal. He’s about to bring his fork to his mouth when he looks at me, straight at me and no-one else. But I simply cannot interpret his look. He holds it for a few seconds, his fork suspended halfway to his mouth; he’s looking at me as if—no, he’s just looking at me, he’s just saying: Look, I’m looking at you. He’s not saying: I’m watching you, be careful, or anything like that. He’s just looking at me, that’s all. He lifts his fork and breaks the look and gives himself over to his meal. I’m about to do the same, then I see her stand up. She pushes the chair back, says something to her neighbour, briefly has eye contact with the teacher, then walks down the aisle between the tables. She passes so close to me that I can feel the gentle breeze in her wake. She keeps her eyes resolutely on the door. She slides it open, steps out into the corridor, then slides it shut again.

  Go. Should I go now? I look around the room. Those who looked up at her have gone back to their meals. There’s nothing in it, I think, she’s drunk too much water and has gone to the toilet. I gesture to the person a few places down the table to hand me the jug. I fill my glass and drink it down, slowly, evenly, with long steady draughts. I put my glass back down on the table. I look around the room. I’m just going to the toilet, I say, to the person opposite me. He looks up, wondering why I’ve bothered him with this news—but I’m already up and gone.

  Out in the corridor I slide the door quietly shut behind me. I’m not sure which way she’s gone. I bob down so I can’t be seen through the high corridor windows and work my way like that to the end of the dinner room. There’s enough light spilling out through these windows to light the stairs and I carefully pick my way down them, one hand on the rail. A piece of chewing gum has been stuck to it, no doubt years ago, and I feel the smooth hard ridge of it with my hand. At the bottom of the stairs I stop to get my bearings—but the trouble is I have no idea where the gymnasium is. The teacher made no mention of it, most likely so that people like me would not go stumbling around in the dark trying to find it. Besides, that was the message from Judd, to meet her in the gym, but why of all people should I trust him? Perhaps she was just going to the toilet and if I stood here long enough I would see her coming back; then I would stop her, say: Here, it’s me—we would hug, kiss, and go back to our meals together. Why did I ever let us separate in the first place? But no, I think, this time I have to trust Judd. His look, the way she deliberately avoided looking at me, these are not figments of my imagination. I look around again. Behind me are the stairs leading back to our living quarters, to my right a short corridor with a door leading out to the playground, to my left the corridor that connects this to the main one, straight ahead of me the continuation of the one I am in: I can see a little way down it, a couple of doors, the lockers lining one wall, then it is all swallowed up by the dark. I’m about to venture in that direction—nothing ventured, nothing gained, I think—when I see a figure coming towards me from out of the corridor to my left. Is it her? Is that her? It’s not. It’s the actor I’d sat next to in the Transit van that day. Marti. Marti, I say. She stops, and looks strangely at me. She doesn’t know who I am. I worked with you, once, I say. She smiles, but I know she’s covering up. Wayne, I say. Then she remembers. But then, almost simultaneously, she is pricked by the memory. Her eyes glaze over. She knows me, but she doesn’t want to know me, doesn’t want anyone to know she knows me. Do you know where the gym is? I ask. She shrugs her shoulders. Maybe that way, she says. She points back to where she has just come from and lets the gesture hang in the air for a moment: she’s thinking, she has something she wants to say, but then just as quickly she drops her arm and with it the unspoken thought. Anyway, she says, nice to see you again—and with that she’s gone, back up the stairs towards the dinner room light.

  I watch her go—what did she want to say?—then go back to my dilemma of which corridor to take. Though it seems ridiculous under the circumstances to take Marti’s word for it I decide to go where she has pointed, back towards the main corridor. I start walking in that direction. It’s dark where I am now, and eerily quiet. There is a three-quarter moon in the sky outside, sliding in and out as if on shifting plates between the clouds, and shreds of this moonlight fall through the corridor windows, dusting the floor with a strange luminescence. When the moon goes in behind the clouds I have to hold one hand out beside me and let my fingers bump along the rows of lockers for guidance; eventually, in this way, I find myself at the crossroad where this corridor meets the main one. This is where, earlier in the day, the teacher had briefly stopped to point out directions to the toilets and the canteen. And it is then, remembering this, that I realise wh
ere the gymnasium is: it’s the building I had my back to at lunchtime, with the sun, the northern sun, on my face, the canteen and playground in front of me. So it’s to the south of the canteen, I think, which, when we first walked up the main corridor, the teacher told us was to our right. From where I’m standing now, then, it must be straight ahead, through that door, outside, and then presumably along a walkway or across an asphalt courtyard to—what? another wing?—and then where would the canteen be in relation to that? And then from there the gym?

  I push the door open and step outside. There is a walkway, it takes me from the door, intersects another wing I’ve not seen before—I glimpse down dark corridors left and right—and then brings me back outside again on the other side. In front of me is the canteen, to my right the school oval, its goalposts eerie totems in the moonlight, and to my left, a little further off, a large brick building with a big sign along the wall nearest to me saying: GYMNASIUM.

  It’s cold outside, a chill night air, and just the faintest touch of a breeze. Though I’ve only been gone five minutes, I feel a long, long way away from the dinner room, the plates of food, the jugs of water, the laughter. The cold air bites my skin and I can feel my nose and upper cheeks start throbbing again. Have I come out in a bruise? And then how would I look? Look at you, she’ll say, what have you got yourself mixed up in this time? I bring my fingers delicately to my face. I touch them to my nostrils then bring them up close to my eyes. It’s hard to tell in this light but I can’t see any blood. I walk across the dark playground to the gym. I push the door. It opens, creaks, then clicks shut behind me.

  It’s surprisingly light inside the gymnasium, there are big windows high on either side and through one of them I can see the moon in what now looks like a cloudless sky. The polished floor, marked out for all kinds of games in white, yellow, blue and red, reflects this moon as a very bright spot just a little way out there in front of me and the light from the windows themselves gives it all a silver sheen. But I can’t see her anywhere. Suddenly I lose my nerve, for everything. If she does want to see me, if she is in here somewhere waiting for me, what will I say to her? I’m a child, truly I am, I’ve learned nothing so far except to do what I’m told. She is free, she has freed herself, and I am back at school. Are you there? I say. Silence. Are you there? There’s a noise from the far end of the gym and then a widening vertical black line appears on the far wall. It’s a door opening, a door I hadn’t seen, a door opening onto a darker room beyond. In here, she says. Yes, it’s her. Quick, in here, she says. I cross the gymnasium floor. She keeps the door open until I reach it then swallows me up with it.