Reading the Ceiling (7 page)

Ade: ‘I tried to shut the door, telling her she had the wrong address.'

Olu: ‘I was halfway down the stairs.'

Ade: ‘She put her handbag in the door and said – It's not the wrong address. I know he lives here.'

Tunde: ‘Then we all started screaming, Mum, Mum.'

Ade: ‘Ma came through from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a towel.'

Tunde: ‘The woman at the door was really shouting now – You tell your father you want to meet the new brother or sister he's started for you all.'

Ade: ‘Mum said, What's going on?'

Olu: ‘The lady went berserk. She pushed at the door.'

Ade: ‘She yelled at Mum – Your husband is going after schoolgirls and making them pregnant.'

Olu: ‘Mum asked her to leave, or she'd call the police.'

Ade: ‘She screamed at her – Call the police all you like, but tell your bastard husband to leave my daughter alone.'

Olu: ‘And she stormed off down the path.'

‘After that, I think your mum deserved a lie-down. Have you told your dad?' I ask.

Ade shakes her head, ‘Not yet, he'll be home soon enough.'

**Outside what used to be Kamal's door, I decide to turn right instead of retracing my steps. Each time I've done this, deliberately walked past
his
door, it's been easier. It's just an ordinary kind of corridor, with an ordinary kind of door. Solid frame painted a hopeful green, with plywooded grubby brown door inset. On the wall to the left, straying north of the door handle and at about eye height, is a sign-board with a slidey thing to display laminated name plates. It now says:
Mr Hamid Mahfouz, Lecturer, Economics and Economic Theory
. 

It used to say, barely a year ago:
Dr Kamal Bensouda, Senior Lecturer, Econometrics
.

 The first time I came by here after he'd gone, I stopped to trace over his name, scarcely believing he could have left, and done it so completely.

Now I find it hard to believe how dread had clutched at me, scraping away bits of skin and leaving a ribbed ridge of irritation in its wake. I was marked by an ache that started – in my throat perhaps, rolling its way down past my heart, tumbling through my stomach and ending up at my leaden feet. It was as if I was stuck to the green, thin pile corridor carpeting, a bit worn where many other feet had rushed past, on their way to somewhere. I'd made up a chant:

 And I willed my broken parts past that door, remembering other terrors from childhood, when a different kind of dread would dog me as we went past Berring Grun, the cemetery that slouched at the entrance to Banjul. As a child, with lips scarcely moving, I would imagine water cutting into the resting holes of the dead and carting them off, sea currents restlessly cradling human bones and rubbing them against each other and rough rocks. To try to stop the fright, I used to say – unheard, breaths uneven –

Aged eight, I could break down the hosts of phantoms into one dead person at a time, and then they seemed manageable – I knew I could confront a solitary ghost, just not too many at the same time. At twenty-one, I was overwhelmed by the ghost of a single person who'd left me.

I fall into a half-hearted doze, my body accepting the weight of an arm flung onto it. My mind thrashes against sleep. I'm fighting an image of me in deep repose – slack-jawed, dribbly, and likely to murmur things out loud. Kamal used to say I wouldn't even let him go have a pee in the night without my arm tightening around him or me saying out loud clearly:
Don't leave me yet
. Kamal is gone. Someone else owns the arm currently draped on me. When I can no longer bear the tension of keeping myself awake, I shake Akim and say, ‘C'mon, you have to leave now.'

He lifts his arm off me, groans and mumbles, ‘I'm asleep, why do I have to leave?'

‘Just because.'

When he does not move, I jab him with my elbow and he sits up and swings his legs over the side of the bed. He stands to reach for the trousers he draped over the armchair. The orange street-lamp outside my bedroom window throws in burnt light.

This is not the first time Akim and I have had an early-morning conversation like this. I've muttered reasons before, whatever I could dredge up, lies I can no longer remember.

As he leans over, his arched back is a set of planed muscles smooth to the touch, nice to hold. He is gorgeous to look at. I still want him to leave.

As he dresses he says, ‘Will I see you tomorrow – I mean later today?'

‘Hmm, maybe.'

‘OK then, I'll find you.'

When I hear the door thud close behind him, I fall into a dreamless sleep into which the alarm peals a few hours later.

London's steel sky hides the sun. As I sit at our tiny kitchen table, I look out on chilled, defenceless gardens and laddered television aerials set at jaunty positions on slate roofs. I grimace at a day ahead filled with lectures as I spoon out the last of Meena's homemade strawberry jam onto the unwilling butt end of a French loaf.

Morning indecisiveness glues me to my seat. Shall I shower now, or in fifteen minutes after listening to the news on the radio? Shall I try to catch the bus or use the underground and give myself a spare half hour? Should I write out my Christmas cards before going in or wait for a break between lectures? Are my spare stamps in my panty drawer or in the sleeve of my manilla folder? Did I stuff my last ten-pound note into that striped cardigan or should I investigate how many coins lurk at the bottom of my handbag?

Meena shuffles in, buffing the wooden floor with her fluffy blue bunny slippers.

‘What this country needs,' I remark, ‘is a good old storm to clear the air and leave it smelling fresh. Something to shift this drabness that stays and stays.'

‘Morning,' she says, stifling a yawn and heading for the fridge. ‘Fixing the world, are you?'

‘Kind of.'

‘Where's Akim?'

‘Chucked him out just after midnight.'

‘Hmm.'

‘What do you mean – hmm?'

‘He's a nice guy.'

‘And what do you want me to do about that?'

‘He's rich. He likes you. A lot. Why don't you try to keep him?' I sigh. She yawns as she extracts a carton of milk.

‘I don't know why.'

I feel her look at me, but I stare out into the garden. ‘It's too early to talk about this sort of thing,' I continue. ‘And how are you and Hari getting on?'

‘Ah, now. You're trying to change the subject.'

She lifts her heavy black hair off her shoulders, twists it into a knot at her nape, and secures it with a pink flower hairband that she slips off her wrist.

‘Duh?' I reply.

‘You're awful, go away.' She lifts a tea towel, scrunches it up and throws it at me.

I stuff my lazy legs into jeans, my top half into a tight ribbed cream polo neck. I add a suede knee-length coat rescued from the heap of clothes behind my bedroom door. I am going to be late for my first lecture. I only found £2.89 so I'll need to create some sympathy for me, somehow, during the course of the day.

Plan A. I could scrounge lunch off the Prof in the Senior Common Room, if I approach him about my dilemma over the future and murmur about needing to mull things over with him. I'll mention that I am thinking through possible job applications but the Careers Office is no good. Their shelves are bursting with pamphlets about rosy prospects in Shell and Price Waterhouse . . . supplemented by thin, unappetising sheets about joining fancy non-governmental organisations that have set out to revolutionise well-building in Bangladesh. Hardworking African teachers have toiled to get me to the top of the educational heap. These choices seem a bit short of special.

They will probably have turkey (roasted) or pie (crusted) on the menu. And the Prof likes the occasional tipple at the end of the week. It being Friday today, if I get the timing right and turn up just before I need to rush off to a lecture, he will feel obliged to offer his ear, and his opinions, and that should be lunch. Guaranteed.

Plan B: I find Rifat, whose mum lives a stone's throw from college. She makes large, heartwarming casseroles with homemade bread and delivers them to his flat several times a week. I could offer to listen to his collection of David Bowie or to check out his latest game design, and the new graphics-rendering tricks he's invented.

If neither of these work, I could always end up with the no-plan option, the default. I need do nothing and Akim will take me somewhere. A complete cop-out.

The tube smells of unwashed, flu-laden warmth. A woman sits across from me with skin that drips off her face in wrinkled folds, and eyes that bulge and seem to be looking everywhere at once. Very crone-like, very
Hansel and Gretel 
bad-woman type, she clutches a tapestry bag with faded colours close to her chest as if it contains a great treasure. She rubs her hand over it occasionally as she munches on toothless gums.

A couple spill into the carriage with giggles and teenage cuddles and relentless touching and kissing. One of the pair is wearing large rectangular glasses and the other is pimply. I look at the two of them cavorting on the train seats, and although I feel a twinge at the loss of innocence, I don't feel envy. I look at them with eyes that search for the hidden, the unknowable between them. One or both of them will soon find out – it's worthless. It all ends in pain.

It has been so easy getting involved with Akim. I let him see the bits of me that need not be cordoned off into little secret holes of self. He has access to the bits that I can make carefree, the parts I can laugh away. I mother him a bit. I have a flat where he can hang out, even if he can't spend an entire night in it. I cook food that he's used to. He does not seem to mind me bossing him around sometimes. He has said, though, that most of the girls he's met since he's been here have only been interested in his car, his money, his ability to take them to expensive nightclubs. According to him, I have been the least resource-hungry girl he's met for a long time. I wonder how different I really am from those girls. I like the fact that he's got money. I like going to places beyond my means. The only hair split is that I refuse to let him buy me things. I've declined offers of watches, jeans, shoes. And he's never seen that in a girl he's dated. He sometimes seems Reuben-like to me, not in his clothes, but in his manner.

I get out at my stop and walk up the escalator, flashing my travelcard at the chubby-cheeked man leaning against his cubicle. I emerge from the station into the indifferent daylight I had studied from my kitchen window. Propelled by the cold and my tardiness, I run-walk down Tottenham Court Road.

I slip into the tiniest crack I can make in the door to get into Public Finance, but the door refuses to co-operate and shuts behind me with a thud. Dr Brian Brown – cords, brogues, check shirt, leather-elbowed jacket – reacts as he always does to latecomers. He pauses, closes his eyes tight, waves his right arm which is holding a stick of chalk in my direction, opens his mouth as if to speak, then closes it again as if compelled by his good nature to hold his tongue.

‘Ms Roberts, in your fine opinion, what is the major burden excessive public debt imposes on a country?'

All heads swivel round to me. I sit on the rind of the swing-down seat, stuck there by the large bag balancing on my knee.

‘Er, I guess it commits future generations to a lifetime of debt repayments.'

‘What if, at some point in the future, a country cannot repay its debts? What then?'

‘Um, well, technically, a country can never become bankrupt as there will always be someone to bail it out of trouble.'

‘Unlike us as individuals, Ms Roberts. Thank you, you may take your seat.'

He turns his back to me, and his attention to the chalkboard. He scribbles:
Can a country become bankrupt?

‘One last thing, do file away, amongst your opinions about public debt, that I like
all
participants in this course to attend my lectures on time.'

He addresses the rest of the class: ‘Would anyone else like to volunteer an alternative opinion on this?'

I fumble in my bag to extract a notepad and pen. I stuff the bag down past my legs and let my weight push the seat down.

Dr Brown proceeds to discuss how to deal with unrelenting inflation, when a government is so incompetent at handling its economy that the cash you thought you had at the beginning of the year is piddle-worthy at the end of it.

Prof McIntyre's door is wide open. He bellows into the phone, ‘Oh no, oh no no no!!' And then slams it down, muttering, ‘The fools, the damn fools.'

When I introduce myself with an ‘Er . . .', he beckons me in.

‘Come in, come in,' he mangles my name, ‘Ayudel. How are you getting on?' He points to his visitor's chair, a leather armchair shoved up close to his corner bookshelf, and already occupied by a tottery pile of books. Sit down, sit down, push the books aside. Have some coffee, fresh. I need to make another call.'

I busy myself with pouring into the cleanest mug in his collection and listen in.

‘Bloody fools, absolutely unacceptable.'

A pause.

‘I depend on you to make them understand that some things simply must not be substituted. Bye.'

He turns to me. ‘Administrators. Trying to cut the budget for our Christmas bash. Need someone to tell them what's what.' He pats the pockets of his jacket and then some papers on his desk. With an ‘Ah, here it is,' he sticks his cherrywood pipe in his mouth, then continues searching. I hand over my lighter and he engulfs the room with tobacco-lined puffs.

‘How are you?' he says.