‘No problem at all,’ he says and I’m like, ‘Cool, thanks.’
So, a few days later, I’m walking down his street in a leafy part of town. Leafy, perhaps, but not particularly well lit. The houses are all big semi-detached jobs with drives and front gardens and loads of brilliant hiding places for muggers and rapists, and I know what you’re thinking. Why did he suggest we have the tutorial at his house, and more to the point, why did I agree? Look at the alternatives. Coffee shop? There’s only Starbucks and obviously I’m not going there. We could hardly meet in a pub, because (a) it’s a Friday night and we wouldn’t get a seat and we’d be shouting at each other to make ourselves heard, and (b) it could easily, and weirdly, start to feel like a date, and from Dave’s point of view especially, that has to be avoided. From mine too, of course, but I’m not the one who’d face awkward questions at work on Monday morning. Although, from what I’ve heard, it’s not like Dave’s colleagues — or perhaps I should say former colleagues — have been models of propriety where relations with students are concerned. But still. As far as I understand it, Dave’s got family. That’s what his biographical note says, anyway. Dave lives in Manchester with his family and teaches creative writing at blah blah blah. This is his first novel. It’s a bit like saying, ‘This is my first wife.’
The appointment was set for six o’clock. It’s the best time of day, at this time of year, for having a nose in people’s windows. Too early to close the curtains but dark enough to have the lights on, so all these comfortable reception rooms with their framed pictures and their well-stocked bookshelves, their dining tables and upright pianos, they’re like little stage sets each one, shining under the lights. Most are empty, but now and again you see someone drift in and wander out again. Maybe they glance out into the darkness and see me, my ghostly white face hovering at the end of their drive like something painted by Edvard Munch.
Dave’s house is near the end of the street. It’s the one with the group of mannequins in the bedroom window. I’ll admit they gave me a fright as I looked up. Nice one, Dave. One dummy in a window, OK, but three, and two of them children? Each to his own, Dave. I squeeze past the knackered old car in the drive and ring the bell.
Dave opens the door and we get through the pleasantries and small talk and I can hear myself overcompensating for my shyness and generally being a bit of an idiot, and Dave’s trying to make me feel at ease, but he’s not a terribly relaxed person himself and so he’s not that good at it. We shuffle down his hall to the kitchen at the end and he says he was having a beer and would I like something and I say I’ll just have a glass of water if he’s got one. If he’s got one? Like his taps might not be working. He pours me a glass from the fridge and we sit down at his kitchen table at a slight diagonal, as if that might be less weird than facing each other directly, but of course it’s weirder, because when would you ever sit diagonally across from someone if there are just two of you?
‘It’s quiet round here,’ I go, meaning the area generally, but I can see he thinks I mean his house.
‘They’re upstairs,’ he says.
I look away because I can’t meet his eyes and on the shelf alongside is this weird-looking lizardy thing.
‘What’s that?’ I ask before I can stop myself.
‘It’s a mummified lizard,’ he says. ‘My sister brought it back from Egypt years ago. I like it.’
‘You’re into mummies, aren’t you?’ I go. ‘I guess it’s the salt.’
Too late, I’ve said it. I want that nice wooden kitchen floor to open up and let me fall into the cellar that is no doubt underneath. He’s looking puzzled.
‘They use salt, don’t they, as a drying agent?’ I say.
‘And why…’ he begins.
I’m cross at myself, but I’m also starting to feel a bit cross with him, too. Why should it have to be a secret that I’ve read his novel? It was published. Why wouldn’t his students — or one of his students, at least — be interested enough to get a copy and read the damn thing?
‘You read us that short-short story by Christopher Burns,’ I said. ‘“The Mummification of Princess Anne”. As an example, you said at the time, of a short-short that was actually worth writing, unlike all those Dave Eggers stories in the Guardian Weekend. Remember?’
‘Of course, I’m just pleased you do.’
‘It was great,’ I say, overcompensating again. ‘I’d love to reread it. What was it in again?’
‘It was in an anthology called New Stories 1.’
‘New Stories 1. I like that. It’s confident. It’s like saying, “This is my first wife.”’
He looks at me, but I can’t meet his eyes. I just want to die.
‘I’ll go and get it,’ he says. ‘You’re welcome to borrow it. You strike me as someone who looks after books.’
He leaves the kitchen and while I listen to his footsteps going upstairs I find myself looking around, checking the table, the work surfaces, the island. I spot a pepper mill, but there’s no sign of a salt cellar. I hear a muffled voice upstairs, but only one. I drain my glass and then he’s back, with the book, which he puts on the table.
‘Where’s the nearest loo?’ I ask. ‘Weak bladder.’
‘Downstairs. Just go out of the kitchen and turn right. The stairs are in front of you.’
I find the loo in the cellar. The seat is up. Hmm. I’m thinking this was a pretty terrible idea, coming to Dave’s house, and I’m wondering how much worse it can get. Maybe there’s another way out of the house from the cellar and I could escape and quit the course and give up writing and never have to see Dave ever again. Half with this in mind, although not seriously of course, and mainly because I’m a nosy cow, I check out the rest of the cellar. There’s enough room down there for a student flatshare. I push open one door — it’s already open really, I just have to open it a little bit wider — and see a couple of huge bags slumped against the wall. I see my hand reaching out to pull open the top of one of them to check out what’s inside and I’m slightly weirded out to see that it’s full of salt. Not table salt and you wouldn’t want to cook with it, but salt all the same. Like the kind of salt they used to put on icy roads when you were a kid. Why’s he got two great big bags of salt in his cellar? And why are his wife and kids so implausibly quiet? And then I hear his voice floating down the stairs from the hall.
‘Are you all right down there?’
No, I’m thinking. Not really.
Campus
‘The theory of flight is simple. Drag and weight try to stop an aircraft: lift and thrust have to overcome them.’
I AM INTERESTED in straight lines.
I was born in Manchester, but left at the age of seventeen to go to London. London doesn’t really do straight lines. There are straight roads, of course; they stand out. The A5. The A1, for a bit. The A30 as it approaches Hatton Cross Tube station and the perimeter of Heathrow Airport. No one can miss those. On the ground, on the map.
When I moved back to Manchester I became aware of a number of less obvious straight lines. If I stand in the bay window of my bedroom and look into the bay window of my neighbour’s bedroom, I can actually see through that bay into the bay of the next house and so on down the street.