Another Country. Anjali Joseph
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‘Oh!’
She collided with something warm and felty. An arm came out towards her.
Leela, murderous but reflexively polite in this other language, muttered, ‘Sorry! Sorry!’
‘Ça va, mademoiselle?’ The voice was deep, annoyingly mellifluous. She half looked up, as far as his chest, grabbed at her Carte Orange. It fell to the linoleum-covered step; she began to dive after it. The black-clad arm got there first. She noticed the hand: brownish, smooth-skinned, nails neatly shaped. She took a step back.
‘Here.’ The stranger held out the grey plastic case. Leela accepted it, forced herself to look at his face – all she wanted, ever, eternally, and in this specific moment, was to slide round the corner, hair over her face, all her possessions more or less attached to her. ‘Thank you,’ she said. The man smiled. He was in early middle age, dark-skinned, dark-haired, brooding, looked like he’d put his eyeliner on in a hurry.
‘Excuse me,’ Leela said. She smiled, skirted him, and continued to bolt up the stairs to the third floor. She scooted past the staff room; the door was ajar and she feared Mme Sarraute, the coordinator of foreign teachers, would be standing there to watch her arrive late. As she reached room 3.14, she shoved the Carte Orange back into her bag, rooted around for the texts, and opened the door.
Four adults in their thirties and forties looked at her, tolerant but surprised. Leela began to explain herself, first in French, then, recalling the rules, in English. ‘I know you’re expecting Miss Molloy, but she’s had to go to England for a few days. I’m taking her classes this week. I wonder if you’d mind introducing yourselves? My name’s Leela Ghosh –’ she pronounced it correctly, but they wouldn’t ‘– and I also teach here –’ pause for smile ‘– so, shall we begin?’ She turned to the man, suited, crumpled looking, on the left of the semi-circle. The students, or clients as the school preferred to call them, sat on high chairs with a flip-out mini desk. The arrangement made them look like disgruntled toddlers.
‘What’s your name?’ She produced an encouraging smile.
‘’Ello, I am Martin,’ the man in the crumpled suit said. He smiled, first at Leela, then, a little more slyly, at the rest of the group. He pronounced his name as though it were English.
‘Martin.’ Leela smiled. ‘And you?’
The stern looking woman next to him smiled. Leela saw an anxious high achiever. ‘I am Catherine.’
‘Hello Catherine. And –’
The door opened and the man from the stairs came in. He smiled silkily. ‘Excuse me, I am late,’ he said. He made his way to the empty seat near the door, took off his coat, and sat down with an air of contentment.
‘Leela. Have another drink.’ The whisky, golden and vaguely rank smelling, was already gurgling into her glass. ‘It sounds like you need it.’
She smiled, and looked at Patrick, pouring the drink, and Simon, next to him.
‘Totally,’ Stella said. ‘So he just followed you onto the bus? What a weirdo.’
‘I didn’t even realise, till he lurched towards me. I was trying to stamp my ticket, because my Carte Orange ran out this morning. I turned around, and he was leering at me and saying Mademoiselle. The bus braked, and I nearly fell over; he tried to steady me, but I pulled away, and I got off right then, when it stopped …’ She paused and looked around. She was aware of three people paying her attention: it made her stumble. She giggled. ‘But he got off after me and stopped me in this really theatrical way, ‘Mademoiselle, je vous prie!’ and peered at me. You know, one of those people who bring their face really close to yours? He had a very deep voice and he said, “Did my gaze disturb you?”’
‘Oh Jesus,’ said Stella. Leela was aware of Patrick smiling at Stella, though he was still listening.
‘Yeah, it was really cheesy.’
Simon chuckled. ‘Then what did he do?’
‘He said if I didn’t go for coffee with him he’d feel terrible, and he had something very important to ask me, as one human being to another, and would I please just drink a cup of coffee with him for a quarter of an hour. And to be honest I didn’t want to walk home and worry about him following me, because we were so close to my house by then, so I did.’ She closed her eyes for a second. What she hadn’t been able to recount, and felt queasy admitting even to herself, given the loathsomeness of Guillaume, for that was his name – was that when his hand had slid over hers in the bus, her first sensation, and perhaps the thing that had made her lurch, had been of its warmth and heterogeneity – the fact of being touched by someone else, who wanted to evoke something in her body. It had not been unpleasant. And yet, of course, she hadn’t wanted it, a conflict that brought about inner revolt, and made her jump off the bus as it stopped.
‘So what did he want?’
Leela sighed. ‘I think he’s just lonely. And weird. He wanted to talk about his wife, who’s leaving him. He can’t see his son and daughter, he’s upset about that, naturally. He tried to persuade me to go for a drink with him.’
‘I hope you didn’t say yes?’ Stella said.
‘No, ugh, no. I told him it’s against the rules of the school. He tried to argue and stuff but I said I had to go. I didn’t want to walk towards my house, just in case. So I came back this way, and that’s when –’ Leela indicated Patrick ‘– I phoned. I hope I’m not intruding.’
‘Leela, not at all. It sounds like a horrible day.’ Patrick was as warm as ever, in as generalised a way; Stella too, in a way that both comforted and desolated Leela, for Stella sat close to Patrick and an unspoken complicity was between them. She was half aware also of Simon, watching her steadily and with some amusement. She looked at Patrick’s hands on the table, square, reddish (‘I have Irish farmer’s hands,’ he would declare) and at Simon’s, curled around his glass. She couldn’t read his expression; it was neither sympathetic nor indifferent, and this drew her to him.
‘Leela, we were thinking of going out for a drink when you called. How does that sound?’
‘Uh, yeah, sure.’
‘We were thinking of going down the road to the Lizard Lounge.’
‘Okay,’ Leela said. She’d passed the bar, and marked it as too fashionable for her. But they walked down in pairs, Stella and Leela ahead, and Patrick and Simon behind, smoking. Leela was aware of Patrick talking and Simon laughing, then responding, and Patrick guffawing. She envied their ease. Stella was being sweet, though. She tucked her hair behind one ear and touched Leela’s arm. ‘I hope you’re not feeling too weirded out by that creep,’ she said. Leela wondered how much to play up the incident. Would it work? Would being wronged or vulnerable endear her to Patrick?
‘It was a bit creepy,’ she said. ‘Especially because it happened near where I live. But I think it’ll be all right.’
‘That sort of thing keeps happening when you first move away,’ Stella was saying as they neared the bar, from which dance music could be heard thumping. ‘I remember