The Sacrificial Man (9 page)

Holding her, watching her, Matty thought of the childless couple who would give her daughter a home. She knew nothing about them, but had no doubt that they would love her child. Her daughter who still had no name. Watching her baby’s face, eyes closed in concentration, tiny hands curled, she wondered if she was capable of being a good mother. Not knowing the answer she bent her head down, smelt the soft scent of new life and, for the first time since she was born, gave her little girl a kiss.

Matty Mariani finally decided on a name for her daughter. She called me Alice.

“I want it all off,” Cate said to the face in the mirror. The hairdresser made a non-committal motion and lifted the shiny scissors from a pouch around her waist, chewing vigorously on gum.

“You sure?”

“Yes,” said Cate, as the blade cut, hair falling like autumn leaves. She closed her eyes and smelt mint.

Amelia loved going to the hairdressers and buzzed around the teenage staff, filling cups at the water cooler and held the swishy horsehair brushes to her face.

“It’s so soft, Mummy.”

The hairdresser laughed, still snipping, as Cate looked down at the magazine trying to finish an article on women who used male prostitutes. Behind her Amelia was chatting to another customer, an elderly woman who asked Amelia how old she was and commented on her pretty nails. Cate caught sight of her own nails. She should have put some paint on them when she did her daughter’s – since when did a four-year-old get pampered more than her mother? Since forever, probably, she thought, listening to Amelia singing a song to her admiring audience.

The snipping continued around her ears, interrupted with occasional demands to look down. She flicked through the magazine, the litany of sex and glamour and interchangeable skinny bodies and perfect pouts.

When Cate felt the swishy brushy on her neck she folded the magazine and looked in the mirror. The hairdresser was gazing proudly at the reflection and Amelia’s new friend had also stopped to see.

“You’ve got great features,” said the hairdresser with expert knowledge, touching the tips with styling wax, “you suit short hair. You should never grow it long – just look at what it does for you.”

The hair was brutally short over her ears, tapered into jags at the nape of her skull. Her eyes looked large, exposed by the short wispy fringe, which barely touched her brows. She hardly recognised herself.

They left the hairdressers on a mission. Cate had put it off as long as she could, but Tim’s daughter was now two weeks old. She had to go through the motions of civility, even if it was a charade. For Amelia’s sake. After all, the new baby was her stepsister.

When he opened the door Tim’s mouth fell slack, and Cate’s hand went instinctively to her hair, feeling self-conscious. He ushered them into the lounge with reverential silence, motioning to the baby sleeping in a Moses basket be-decked with pink gingham. Cate hadn’t been in the lounge before, choosing to collect or drop Amelia off at the front door without crossing the threshold, and she looked around with curiosity. The room was literally swamped with flowers, every surface had a Congratulations card, and a silver balloon announcing
It’s a
Girl!
bounced on the ceiling.

Sally, Cate was secretly pleased to see, looked on the brink of physical exhaustion. The fatigue of the weary explorer, back from some gruelling expedition; Sally’s hair was having a bad day, and she was wearing a shapeless smock. Cate handed Amelia the present and card, which she rushed over to Sally, crawling onto her lap and insisted on opening herself. Sally kissed Amelia then, remembering Cate, blushed before gaping at Cate’s changed hairstyle “how are you, Cate?”

“Fine, ta.”

Minimal words. Sally started sleeping with Tim when he was still living with Cate, Amelia was just six weeks old when he left them. How, Cate would love to ask, would you feel if he left you in four weeks time? Abandoned you with a screaming baby, leaking breasts and a sagging stomach just when you most needed to be loved and cared for? It hadn’t been the best of times for Tim to choose. She hoped Sally felt ashamed though she doubted it. If she had any conscience at all she wouldn’t have slept with another woman’s bloke.

Thank God Amelia was oblivious to all of this. Cate didn’t want to poison her daughter and did her best to hide her feelings. Above all, Amelia came first. It was only after they’d left that Cate realised she’d forgotten to ask the baby’s name.

You, who have chosen to listen, will understand this: I’ve set up the TV in the darkened lecture theatre, and Cate and I sit, side by side, on the front bench. I press play and the screen blinks to life. On it, I’m facing a room full of students.

‘Keats was no stranger to death,’ I announce as the camera pans the whispering, jostling room. They become still and listen. ‘He cared for his mother when he was only a child and as a youth saw his brother, Tom, fight a long and losing battle with tuberculosis. These experiences were fundamental to his writing. His brother was a young man, in his prime. To Keats, who loved Tom dearly, his death was a loss to the whole world. Young and bright and beautiful. But the grieving Keats had a choice: to rail against God in anger and fury at the injustice of early death, or to transform, to reevaluate, that experience into a blessing. This reaction is not peculiar to artists. We all do it. Take a look in any churchyard at a child’s grave and the stone will invariably tell us that the dead baby was too good for this world, an angel. Death of the old or infirm is expected, a normal rite of passage for us all. But the death of a child, or of a young man, is a terrible happening. An error in the natural order of things. It threatens our understanding of life, of death, of God. This is what happened to Keats. The tragedy of his brother’s death endowed his work with genius. Keats himself only lived until his twenty sixth year.’ The camera pans to the front row where, to the left of the screen, an overseas student takes notes with professional speed.

I enjoy watching my performance, conscious of Cate at my side, also intent on listening to this erudite, articulate person on the screen. My onscreen image is beautiful, slim, clever. To Cate Austin, as to the students sitting enthralled, it must appear as if I have it all.

‘As Keats said,’ I conclude, projecting to the camera, ‘now more than ever seems rich to die. To cease upon the midnight with no pain. A perfect death is a way to cheat the dulling, dumbing effect of time. To die at the height of love is the only way to preserve its purity.’

My voice is louder as I say this, cracked with emotion. I look sideways, wondering if Cate has noticed this.

On the screen there is a moment’s stillness before the students move and chatter, gathering their belongings as they leave the hall. A few of them slow up, milling around the lectern as if to ask me something but I ignore them, intent on collecting my papers, and eventually they drift away. The show is over.

I stand and switch the tape off, turn the lights on.

Cate remains in her seat, “That was quite something.”

As we are making our way out we both realise that we are not alone. There is the sound of snoring and we see a slumped figure a few rows behind us. “Alex?” I say loudly. He must have been here the whole time.

His head lolls up, revealing the whites of his eyes, red marks on his cheeks from where his knuckles have pressed. He’s not just asleep, he’s intoxicated.

“God knows how he’s made it into the second year.” I mutter, glancing at Cate, who is studying him closely.

His eyes are dilated and his lips cracked.

“Alex is always like this,” I tell her, “apart from when he’s hyped and then he won’t shut up. I gather from the polarisation in his moods that he varies his drug of choice.”

“Can’t he get help? Don’t you have drug counsellors at the college?” Alex is in a bad way, trying to focus and swaying in his seat.

“Help is available if he wants it, but he doesn’t. He’ll never pass this year; he’ll drop out. No degree ceremony for him. Come on, we can’t do anything.” I’m already walking towards the exit when I hear him say, “Bitch!” Cate stops, no doubt expecting me to rebuke him. “Let’s go.” I say, turning to leave, but she is slow and before we have exited the hall he cries out, “You murdering bitch.” In the corridor I walk ahead, Cate catching up behind me.

“Do you often get jeered like that? Why didn’t you challenge him?”

I don’t turn, just quicken my pace. “Come on, Miss Austin. I only have half an hour to spare before I must get on with marking essays.”

My office is a good size, flanked by pristine white shelves, rows of books placed together aesthetically. Orange penguins, shelves of dark older novels, paperbacks in reds and pinks and blues. Green books are fewer, a fact you wouldn’t know if you catalogued your collection by author or subject, but my collection is not conventionally arranged. It is a piece of art.

Cate stares, a viewer in a gallery. “How do you find the one you’re looking for?”

“I close my eyes, I picture the cover.”

Cate sits in the plastic chair used by students before my ridiculous suspension. Her suit is buttoned and it pulls tight across her chest. “I know nothing about Keats, but does his work really mean all that, or is that what you feel? Is that what you think about time? That it has a dulling, dumbing effect on love?”

My own chair is brown leather, an angled back. It leans with me, away from her. “I think it’s a matter of fact that time is the murderer of love and beauty. A perfect death, especially a young death, is like a fly trapped in amber. It is beyond time, beyond decay. Like the revellers depicted on Keats’
Grecian Urn,
the deceased will never age. Only death, or art, can cheat time.”

“But what about love that lasts forever, couples who are devoted to each other in their eighties, nineties? Isn’t that a way of cheating time, too?”

The heating is on high and she looks hot, but doesn’t remove her jacket. I pour two glasses of water from the jug and hand one over. “Maybe. But time still ravages beauty. And it is rather a risk to think love can be sustained. In my experience it doesn’t last.”

She doesn’t disagree. She looks beyond this room, out of the large window, to where students will be walking briskly across the cold square. I don’t look, I know what’s there and it bores me. I pull her attention back. “All of this means nothing to those students. They’re still young enough to feel immortal – they know nothing of death.”

“That’s a bit patronising, just because they’re young doesn’t mean they haven’t experienced grief.”

“Even if death has taken someone close to them it will seem remote. Pleasure and sin are the narcotics of the young. They’re too busy enjoying life to fear its loss. They can’t wait to leave the lecture hall and head to the union bar. That’s the main reason they came to university.”

“Surely that can’t be right, there must be many students who are here because they want to study.” Her tone is sharp.

“Miss Austin, I long for pupils with genuine aptitude, who wish to learn for learning’s sake. Sometimes I despise my students. I see them texting on their mobiles in my class, I’m forced to read work plagiarised from the internet. And not one of them would choose to sit in their room studying when they could be out partying. They think that English Literature is dead and gone, irrelevant to their modern lives of rap and horror films, gadgets and gizmos. They don’t realise that nothing they experience is new.”

“But on the video the students were totally rapt by your lecture. Not one of them looked distracted.”

“Well, I work hard to keep them entertained. That’s why it’s so wrong that I’m not allowed to teach. This week I was scheduled to give a lecture on
St Agnes Eve
. The poem is not a romantic love story but a sensual exploration of a rape. That would have got their attention. It’s not politically correct and I was looking forward to the pseudo-feminists’ reaction. But don’t be fooled, Miss Austin. The students that appeared so engrossed on that tape, would shortly afterwards be drinking vodka and snorting cocaine in the union bar. You saw evidence of that yourself.”

Cate is silent for a while, “Who was he?”