The guy marking papers
Bzzzz. The guy on the next table looks down at his phone, which is vibrating on the sticky wooden tabletop. The girl sitting opposite him is chewing her short nails. The guy picks up.
‘Hello?’
It’s late afternoon, and the couple are sitting in an old music pub near Covent Garden, lyrics etched on the ceiling and records stuck to the walls.
The guy stands up, takes a few steps away.
His conversation is inaudible. The girl’s rings tap nervously against her glass.
Whatever the call is about, it’s far more interesting than a pile of geography homework, and the teacher at the next table can feel their anxiety.
He thought he’d take his students’ mock exams out for a pint, but it hasn’t made him any less tetchy. He’s waiting for a call, too.
‘Thank you,’ says the guy. He hangs up, lowers the phone, returns to his seat. His face betrays nothing.
‘So?’ she says.
He ekes it out. Then, the hint of a smile. ‘I got it.’
She shrieks, breaks into a grin. ‘I knew it,’ she says. ‘I mean, I literally knew it.’
‘You knew?’
‘I work for the producer,’ she says. ‘Of course I knew.’
She decrees that a celebration is in order, turns her eyes to the laminated menu. ‘You work at a bar,’ she says. ‘What’s a good champagne?’
‘Not that kind of bar.’
‘Buzzkill.’
Since they got here, the guy has stuck exclusively to Guinness. The girl suggests a compromise, a combination. Opposites attract. She heads to the bar and returns to the table with two flutes of black velvet, the dark stout mingling with the light bubbles in the glass.
‘Cheers,’ she says.
‘Cheers.’ He drinks, winces.
The teacher opens his phone again, checks the long text bubble he sent ten minutes ago.
Too long? There is still no answer. He sighs, makes a note on the paper in front of him in red pen.
He reads the note back, crosses it out. He can’t stay focused.
The talk at the next table is low and stilted, punctuated by long looks and tentative questions.
Not the euphoria one would expect after good news.
‘Did you keep it?’ the girl is saying. ‘The picture?’
The guy’s face betrays nothing. ‘Should I have?’
‘I’m not sure I got you right,’ she continues, talking fast. ‘You and your eyebrows. Your headphones. Your—’
‘Clara,’ he says.
Clara stops. ‘Yes?’
‘I kept it.’
Warmth spreads across her cheeks. She suppresses a smile. ‘I know I got Jasper right,’ she says. ‘All scribbles.’
At the mention of its name, the dog beneath their table rouses. The girl contorts her body to pet him, scratching his ruff as he leans against her bare leg. The guy watches her, elbows on the table, bearded chin rested upon clasped hands.
‘Can I say something?’ he says.
‘Please do.’
‘When you said you saw my billboard, I acted embarrassed, because I felt like that’s what I was supposed to do.
’ He pauses to drain his drink. ‘But I don’t want to be embarrassed.
That’s not me. I’m grateful, really.’ He looks down into his empty glass.
‘The guys from the band understand that. They don’t take the piss too much, because they get it.
I never had money growing up. None of us did.
’ He rubs his lower lip with the back of one tattooed thumb.
‘When I got that first paycheque, I didn’t want to touch it.
I was terrified someone had made a mistake, that they’d take it away.
’ His hand strays to the headphones around his neck.
‘So, all I bought was these. And now I never take them off.’
He looks up at her. Her brow is furrowed. He rubs one of his arms, suddenly seeming self-conscious.
‘I don’t usually talk this much,’ he says. ‘I guess, what I mean is, this is a big opportunity for me,’ he says. ‘So, thank you.’
She’s finished her drink, too. Before she can respond, he’s heading off to grab two more. Only when he’s gone does she break into a smile, one which is once again hidden away by the time he sits back down. He places the drinks on the table, but holds hers back.
‘Seb…’
‘I shared,’ he says. ‘Your turn.’
He pushes the glass towards her. His hand lingers, callused palm outstretched.
She seems to know what he wants. She reaches into her bag, hands him a plain black sketchbook.
He takes it, handles it with care. For a while they sit in a silence which seems impossibly loud, Seb flicking through the pages and studying each drawing while Clara squirms in her seat.
The teacher heads to the bar himself, orders another pint, a portion of chips.
When he returns to the table, Seb has reached the end of the sketchbook.
He closes it, holds it on his lap. Then he looks up at Clara, something new in his eyes.
‘You’re really talented,’ he says.
His voice is so sincere that Clara seems disarmed, unable to respond. The music drifting over from the radio behind the bar is tinny and distorted.
‘What was your band called?’ Clara asks, changing the subject.
‘It doesn’t matter now.’ He slides the book back across the table. Their hands touch, then move quickly apart. ‘Tell me something about you,’ he says.
‘Like what?’
‘Anything,’ he says. ‘I don’t know anything.’
‘I’m a classic middle child.’ Clara shrugs. ‘Younger brother, older sister.’
‘Sounds crowded.’
‘It can be.’
‘And your parents?’
Something in her voice changes. ‘Not much to report.’
Seb doesn’t labour the point. ‘I’m not big on crowds either.’
‘But you were in a band,’ Clara says.
‘Do I mention it that much?’
‘Don’t worry,’ she says. ‘It’s sexy.’
It’s clear that she’s testing the water. Seb clicks his teeth, turns his eyes towards the door. He can’t look at her, and she can’t look away. They talk more about the band, about its members. When he gets on to the topic of his friends, Seb seems to relax a little. Familiar territory. Home ground.
‘His name is Smudge?’ Clara is saying.
‘No, his name is Ben,’ Seb replies.
‘Then why is he called Smudge?’
‘No one can remember,’ he says. ‘But that’s not the story.’
‘What’s the story?’
‘He’s started a surfacing business,’ Seb says.
‘He has a van, and on the side it says, “Ben Morris Surfacing”.’ He falters a little, gives the look of someone who knows a joke won’t be as funny in the retelling.
‘So all the other guys shout it, now. If we’re on holiday together. If he gets out of the pool.’
Clara snorts, though possibly only out of sympathy. ‘It must be nice,’ she says. ‘Having such close friends.’
‘You don’t have friends?’
‘One or two,’ she says. ‘My flatmate, Ren. I’d kill for her. But I’ve always been happy in my own company.’
‘Lone wolf,’ Seb replies, with a certain kind of look.
‘I don’t need anyone.’
‘Everyone needs people.’
She shrugs. ‘I don’t.’
‘You would say that.’
‘You think I need you?’
‘I didn’t say that.’
Clara looks down, bites her lip. The teacher can tell that she’s getting frustrated. That she wants something from Seb, and that it isn’t this. What happened between these two? Where does it all go from here? The teacher’s chips have arrived. He doesn’t have much of an appetite.
‘I don’t abandon things,’ Clara says, abruptly.
‘What?’
‘You said I abandon things,’ she continues. ‘And it touched a nerve, because I know I didn’t call, and I didn’t give you an explanation. And now you have a certain perception of me. But that isn’t me, either. That isn’t what I do. I see things through.’
‘If you say so.’
‘No,’ she insists. ‘I know I talk a lot, and I make jokes, and you think you know me, and you think I lay everything on the table.’ Her voice falters.
‘And I wasn’t totally honest – but I was there on that bus, and I’m still here, and that means something.
I’m here because I felt like we understood each other.
’ She fixes him with her icy blue eyes. ‘I don’t think I’ve felt like that before. ’
‘That’s why you’re here?’ Seb says.
This time, he doesn’t look away. The intensity of his gaze makes her blink. She picks, suddenly and self-consciously, at the hem of her oversized jumper.
‘You know why I’m here,’ she says, quietly.
There’s a stage in the corner, an abandoned mic sitting lonely in the middle of it. Seb leans back in his chair, nods towards it.
‘So, what?’ he says. ‘Are we going to sing again?’
Clara follows his gaze. She shakes her head. ‘I meant more like—’ She bites her lip. ‘We could get out of here. You and me.’
Seb swirls the dregs of his drink, then sighs. ‘What’s going on, Clara? We’ve done this all before.’
‘We can do it again.’
‘It doesn’t work like that,’ he says. ‘I’m not spontaneous like you.’
‘Say what you really mean.’
‘I don’t change my mind,’ Seb says. ‘How do I know you won’t change yours again?’
‘You don’t,’ she says. ‘But I won’t.’
Seb doesn’t say anything.
‘You don’t think I’m good for you.’ Her voice has an air of incredulity.
‘I don’t think we’d be good for each other.’
Clara laughs a humourless laugh. ‘The jobless drummer with all the tattoos,’ she says. ‘Don’t tell me you’re not impulsive.’
Seb narrows his eyes. ‘Did you just call me jobless?’
‘You’re a big boy,’ she says. ‘You’ll get over it.’
The air has become charged with a different kind of frustration.
Seb is rigid, his arms tensed. Clara is leaning towards him, fingers gripping the edges of her chair.
They look as if it’s taking all their effort not to sweep everything off the table, to pounce on one another.
The teacher feels a pressure bearing down on him suddenly, so intense that it gives him a start.
He looks down, realises that their dog is pressing its damp little chin into his leg.
It looks like Hairy Maclary, a tangled black furball out of which eyes dart from the teacher to his chips.
At the next table, the moment has passed.
‘Look,’ Seb says, his voice more measured. ‘I’m grateful for your help. And I think…’ He taps a green packet of tobacco nervously on the tabletop. ‘Maybe we could be friends.’
‘I don’t want to be friends,’ Clara says.
They lock eyes. Seb looks like he might say something, but the words seem to escape him.
‘What are you afraid of?’ Clara says.
The teacher returns to his students’ papers.
He’s got a dollop of ketchup on the page, and no matter how hard he scrubs, it won’t come off.
What are you afraid of? He flips his phone over, opens the chat.
Two hours and still no response. The dog’s chin is pressing so hard that it’s painful, now, like a wrestler digging in an elbow to force his opponent into submission.
The teacher relents and sneaks the dog a couple of mouthfuls.
A chair scrapes back and Clara stands abruptly.
Then she leaves without saying a word. Seb watches her go, powerless to keep her, unable to tell her to stay.
The teacher catches his eye, looks quickly away, his gaze alighting first on the exam papers, then on the vibrating phone in front of him.
An incoming call. He moves so fast to answer it that he sends papers flurrying to the floor.