Our narrator has recently moved to an unnamed eastern European city in order to write his great work. He is waiting for inspiration:

...I had been born with an aristocratic older lady tethered to my insides. I didn’t need too much external verification.

            When I was twelve, stumbling into the horrors of puberty, reeling from the revelation of Will’s unclad torso glimpsed in the changing rooms, I came to realise that I needed to protect myself. I made a decision: I would never attempt to be of the body. Physical beauty belonged only in the realms of extreme fantasy. Whatever caresses I might come by in my life, they would never equal the sight of a bare-chested school bully. I knew this, accepted it and made my decision- I would never be of the body.

            I considered Stephen the best I could hope for.

            I am not ashamed of the time we spent together. Stephen is now a very successful man, quite the celebrity in his own milieu. I could boast a bit if I had the heart. I don’t.

            Lonely, I struggled into my second month in the city, continuing to hide in my flat, still clinging to a little hope. I imagined my book unfolding. I walked from room to room clutching at ideas, all ephemeral, all sickeningly dull given a minute’s consideration. My real energies went into the construction of fantasies that were far from literary, their purpose being to keep me from teetering over into total despair. Ever since childhood I had done this: imagined life rather than lived it. In my early months in the new foreign city I returned to this hobby with gusto. I would walk around my flat talking to myself. My eyes open but my mind elsewhere.

            There were restrictions in place. The imaginings had to be within the realms of possibility.This still allowed me plenty of scope. Thus I daydreamed of myself made respectable, respected and popular by my literary achievements. Famed for my soirees, I attracted the artistic and intellectual elite from all over Europe to my tastefully furnished abode and served cocktails amid witty banter dressed in a green velvet smoking jacket. Very Wildean, I thought- my diluted approximation of the man (I could barely even drink back then). I pictured titled people in my sitting room: Duke, Duchess, Earl. Walking through fields in tweeds, shotgun over one arm, turned suddenly unsqueemish, I saw myself at Sandringham, invited the for the Boxing Day shoot. Such fantasies were fine.

            But the aforementioned bully was out. He had no place in my conscious thoughts. Many years ago I had banished him to that wheedling limbo very close to sleep, where he would sometimes appear. Then it would be sticky pyjama bottoms again. Once more the scrubbing of the stubborn spot.

            How sure I was of my ability to transcend such seedy matters! I really thought I was meant for higher things.

Our narrator has a social engagement. A significant suggestion is about to be made:



They had been kind to invite me, but I had clearly bored them.

            
When I walked out of the bathroom I saw that they were kissing. An open-mouthed,

sloppy, head-tilting kiss: a snog. It didn’t last long. The sound of my footstep forced them

apart with an awkward jerk. Paul made to stand up: “Coffee, Smithy?”

            
“Um,” hot with embarrassment, I couldn’t form the words I needed to refuse, “I, erm,

ah.”

            
Magda leapt out of her chair. “I will make,” she said and sauntered off.

            
I resumed my place at the table. Two seconds of quiet, and Paul raised his eyes to

meet mine.

            
“It’s love, Smithy, it really is. And it’s the best bloody feeling in the whole bloody

world. Sometimes I can’t believe it’s happening to me.”

            
He paused in the way drunk people do, to gaze at one like a fool, face heavily

hanging, eyes confused. I was his audience, perhaps he was checking the response. This was

a man who had taken pity on me in the staffroom when we had worked together, deploying a

safely-contained altruism, one that was brief and easy to escape. Now he was bored by me.

He must have been.

            
A few chance circumstances had bumped us along into a potion which could loosely

be termed friendship. I really couldn’t say how many years had passed since that percolator-

fumed moment when I had gingerly placed a fresh copy of Stephen’s magazine into the

expressionless jaws of my pigeon hole. ‘Stop right there!’ Oh, I’d heard him plenty of times

before talking too loudly, never quite drawing a corresponding level of ebullience from his

interlocutor. One hears, cringes and turns away, faintly embarrassed, faintly besmirched.

‘Stop right there,’ (repeated), ‘is that a Mahler special I see?’ He knew my name but asked

me to say it to him once more, a disheartening ritual performed beneath strip lighting and

polystyrene squares, my existence in that space slightly verified by a baffling, baffled man

who shouts the word ‘friend’ a few times too often to be believed.

            
Watching that drunken old face; he couldn’t have truly wanted to spend time with

me! The concept was a neurotic’s joke.

            
He snapped his eyes away from mine and said: “So Smithy, let’s talk about you.

How’s the writing going? I expect you’ve been locked up in that flat of yours for days at a

time, scribbling away, or should I say typing? I’ve always known you had it in you. That

head of yours,” (he pointed a wavering finger at my thin curls), “has always had something

special in it. You’re a quiet man, but that’s the key, right? Watch, listen, remember, taking it

all in. I bet your insights are...quite something.” He clapped his hands with a small laugh.

“The city has her very own Proust.”

            
Proust? Why Proust? But yes, if ever I spoke in the staffroom, it had been about my

writing: my plans to escape and fulfill my potential. Trying to give the impression, with great

subtlety I had hoped, that genius lurked within me. Now I was paying for that occasional, no

rare, loquacity with these questions. My pen and paper lying on the desk in my flat like an

accusation; the pile of notebooks full of false beginnings; my long days spent fantasising

behind a safely-locked door- Christ, this man thought I’d actually been doing something! I

had paid my air fare and rented a flat in order to hide away in a country other than my own. I

found the strength to lie:

            
“Things aren’t going too badly.” My voice separated from its source and hovered

above the table cloth. “I’m working on something that might have...potential.”

            
“Too modest, Smithy, too modest!”

            
“To be honest, I don’t like discussing it. I don’t mean to cause offence. It’s just that I

don’t want to jinx the” (why oh why?) “ project. I suppose I’m a little superstitious.”

“You’re an artist my friend,” he said softly, “and an artist has his own prerogative.”

I felt that his hand wanted to tap my knee, but I was too far away for him to reach.

Magda brought me a delicate cup of fragrant coffee. I sniffed it and thanked her. It seemed

she had been listening to our conversation.

            

“Paul tells me all about this,” she said, sitting down. “He says you are writer. I like

reading very much. Maybe I can read something you write? I would like this.”

            

“Maybe.” I was flustered. My cheeks had begun to smart somewhat.

            

Paul placed a hand on Magda’s cream sleeve. “All in good time, my sweet. The

master needs time and space to produce his tour de force. Isn’t that right, matey?”

            

“Of course, yes.” I tried to sound light-hearted, but my voice carried a distinct tinge of hysteria.

            

“There is something else important we need to discuss with you, Smithy. Isn’t that

right, Magda?” A nod of assent. “We’ve been thinking, you see, how unfair it is that I should

be so happy and in love when you’re there on your own, scribbling away. It doesn’t seem

right somehow.”

            

We’ve been thinking. So Magda had been made to pity me before we had even met.

            

“So,” said Paul in the tone of a man about to give away his fortune, “we would like to

take you to a place you might find rather interesting, let’s say. Magda knows it well. It’s very

popular. Could be the secret to making your time in this city that bit more special, if you

know what I mean.”

Our narrator gets a bit of part time work:

The ugly boy sitting opposite me chewed wetly on his pencil as he thought about what

I had said. He removed it from his mouth, pulling out a thin string of spit.

          

  “I’m not entirely sure I agree with you,” he said.

            “Well, we all have our own opinions.”

            “Hmmmn. Bit of a truism.”

            A ginger-haired girl, thickly freckled, with pale sad eyes, snapped in my defence.

“Greg. Why don’t you shut up?”

            “Okay, let’s just trade clichés then.”

            “I think this aggression is somewhat inappropriate,” I said, dreading having to get

angry.

            The ginger girl spoke up again. “Maybe he’s saying that you seem not to like the

book, sir. But our other teacher, she had a lot to say in favour of it, you see, and, well, we

mostly ended up agreeing with her.” The girl was shy. It cost her a lot of effort to say this,

and there was a tell-tale tremor in her voice.

            “It’s more than that,” said Greg, staring resolutely at his desk. “You don’t seem to be

able to separate yourself from the times you live in, sir. You’re probably jaded from teaching

this book too often. We can understand that. But with literature it’s imperative that you put

yourself into the correct historical context, wouldn’t you agree? It would be criminal not to

celebrate the book as a triumph of moral courage. That’s the point I want to make.”

            “Well stated,” I said, and hoped we might move on.

            There were just ten pupil in the class, and for the first half an hour they had sat

watching me in an atmosphere of quiet tension. I was relieved to see that none of them were

pretty- I would be able to go through the rather tedious motions without forming any

emotional attachments. Chilly indifference I could cope with. This need to challenge and

claim territory now being displayed, on the other hand, presented a far more troublesome

issue.

            A girl piped up from the back of the room. A sickly thing- pallid, hair lank and

colourless, a delicate sprinkling of pimples, small glasses. There was a jarring American

twang to her vowels and some of her consonants refused to leave her tongue without a bit of a

struggle. A near approximation of a native English speaker.

            “We talked a lot about moral courage and the strength that Jane shows. It’s easy to be

cynical but I think it’s a very beautiful book.”

            There were a few mumbles of what sounded like agreement, although most of the

pupils were keeping themselves distant from proceedings, pretending not to see or hear what

was happening, much like those gatherings of bystanders when a mugging takes place-

turning their heads away, frightened of the consequences of involvement.

            I should have left the subject alone, only I was becoming incensed by the pious look

the girl was wearing on her pimpled face. I asked her where she thought Jane got her strength

from- “Is it actually her own?”

            The girl blushed in ugly mottles: “From God,” she said. “She gets it from God.”

            Did I raise an eyebrow? Did I make a sound? I thought I was exercising great control

in repressing my reactions, yet still the poisonous Greg was able to divine them. Perhaps he

had developed extra-sensory perception to compensate for his lack of chin, for the unsightly

fuzz, for the yellow-tipped spots?

            “It is still possible to believe, you know. You can be clever and have faith. They’re

not mutually exclusive at all. It’s happened throughout history. There’s nothing ridiculous in

taking strength from God. And sir, you do remember where we are, don’t you? You know

what percentage of the population here is Catholic?”

            I stared at him blankly. Was this what Sylvia Reid had meant when she used the

expression ‘exacting?’ Some little oik trying to show off? I refused to answer him. People

who wield opinions like weapons and can call on a vast array of knowledge to aid their

belligerent cause have always intimidated me. When I was younger I had attempted to

develop some opinions, but I had long since stopped bothering. To have opinions, one needs

to believe in something a little bit. It wasn’t for me.

            “Well, you all seem very familiar with this book. Perhaps we should move on.”

            “So that’s it then?” continued Greg. “You’re not going to justify what you said? A

cosy novel you called it.”

            I had no memory of saying such a thing but, there again, from the moment I entered

the room I had been operating through a sickly film of panic, trying my best to sound

authoritative, trying not to bolt out the door. I was not used to pupils listening to what I had to

say.

            A deep breath: “I’m not interested in arguing about these things. Perhaps someone

else might have something to say. I assume your last teacher discussed feminist takes on the

novel?”

            “She brushed over them as quickly as she could.” A new voice, somewhere to my left.

A girl with a bowl haircut that hid her eyes. Next to her sat a scrawny chap with round

glasses and a big smirk on his mouth. “Gosia,” he said in a whiney voice, the sarcasm badly

hidden, “surely you’re not going to be nasty about our lovely Miss Sledzic?”

            “Well,” she said, “being in a serious car crash doesn’t make you any more clued up

about feminist theory. Nor does it make any less conventional and quaint, for that matter.”

            The pimpled Christians coughed and muttered and an eerie silence stole across the

room, a quickly thickening freeze. I shuffled the pile of papers given to me by the head of

department.

            “Okay then. Maybe we should take a look at some possible essay titles.”