Gretna Sunrise (extract)
Vivien Jones
‘Work banishes three great evils...,’ he begins.
‘Stop that! Don't say one of those things! Just tell me.’ Hannah stamps
her foot.
The Professor takes a step back in consternation. He is stung. ‘It is not
“one of those things”, as you call them. It is Voltaire,’ he protests.
‘It's bullshit. It's what you say when you don't want to answer. I thought
you liked me.’ She places the non-sequitur with confidence. She begins to
scrape one foot along the ground. She is working up to something. Out it comes.
‘And you wear those stupid clothes. Teenage clothes. You're all wrong. You're
in the wrong place. You're just kidding all the time. You should be working in...
in... a library or a museum or a school,’ she adds, suddenly exorcised and
shy. ‘You'd be a nice teacher.’
He scrapes his own foot along the ground and speaks to himself.
‘I was a nice teacher,’ is what he says and he is suddenly pitched somewhere
else. He is back at his “proper” work. He faces the teenage tribe that
mocked and humiliated him, he sees again their angry red faces, he hears their jeers
as he ducks the shower of text books.
‘Monsieur Merde! Monsieur Merde!’ they shriek, and he flinches, contracts
into a corner, knees and arms bent, head down, sobbing under a tessellation of French
texts.
He is terrorised by memory.
Hannah immediately cheers herself. She reads his posture as pleasure at a secret
shared though he is actually limp with misery. ‘What did you teach, then?’
‘French,’ he answers.
‘Say some, go on, say some French.’ Hannah is enchanted with her new
knowledge of him.
‘Ce qui n'est pas clair n'est pas français...’ he seems very
shy again and speaks quietly so just Hannah can hear. She notes this.
‘It's okay, I won't tell the others — Monsewer,’ she adds grandly
but in a whisper. ‘But could you teach me... on Sundays? Could you teach me
how to say it proper?’ Hannah thinks of the currency she will have with her
friends speaking in French and at school. No more D minus, “could try harder.”
‘Would you like that? It's a long time since I taught...’ he seems dubious.
Hannah knows about lessons and she minimises the possibility of tedium immediately:
‘If it was just you and me... and just words, just the names of things. Not
writing,’ she shudders.
He knows about lessons too and wonders if Hannah's aptitudes include a capacity
for cruelty. She certainly had a temper. He thinks about his “proper”
work, feels the weak throb of fear running through his veins, tries as he has tried
countless times to swallow the past so that he can say yes to this eager child.
He stares into the market space.
All around them vans and lorries are being loaded with the leftovers of the day,
the task only marginally lighter than the morning's unloading. Sammy's stall has
been folded away. There is now a rectangle of dropped and spoiled fruit and vegetables
marking its boundaries and Sammy is stacking boxes to shoulder height in his Transit,
smoking furiously. The Country and Western Showcase stall has finally ceased its
twanging and howling. A cowboy-clad man and wife team have covered their fringed
jackets with oilskin coats and packed hundreds of CDs and tapes into a motorbike
sidecar. The ground is speckled with plastic and paper bags, squashed burgers and
ice-cream cones. Willum scrubs the catering van to shining perfection and the smell
of overcooked oil permeates the drizzle that starts to fall. He waves at the Professor
who feels a tug at his sleeve.
‘Are you mad at me?’ Hannah asks. ‘Will I come and help you again
next Sunday? You can forget the French. I won't keep you off your work.’
He turns to her and smiles. ‘Indeed, you may, Hannah, and I don't see why
we shouldn't conduct our work in French from time to time. N'est-ce pas?’
‘Nessy paaa,’ says Hannah, grinning.
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