Only Darkness. Danuta Reah
the Broome building. The day was fine after the storm of the night before, but cold. The steps served as an informal coffee bar, meeting place and, since the college management implemented a no-smoking policy, a smoking room for students and staff. It didn’t make a particularly attractive venue, as a busy road ran between the buildings, and conversation was interrupted by the noise of cars, and buses pulling away from the stop outside the main entrance. The air always smelt dirty, particularly on cold, still days.
Debbie nodded to Trish Allen, a psychology lecturer and hardened smoker, who was continuing her class through the coffee break with a small group of students, all huddled in a companionable, smoky ring. She saw the lanky figure of Sarah Peterson, one of her A-level students, standing uncertainly in the entrance, drawing awkwardly on a cigarette. Debbie greeted Sarah as she went past and received a quick, eyes-averted smile. She felt tempted to go back out and join the group on the steps, spend ten minutes talking to another human being – something she hadn’t done since nine-thirty the previous night, but she pushed through the double doors into the dark, high-ceilinged corridor beyond.
One of the first people she saw as she pushed through the doors was Rob Neave coming down the stairs towards her, heading out of the building. He stopped when he saw her. ‘Get wet last night?’ he asked. Debbie nodded and he laughed. She began to feel more cheerful.
‘There was something I wanted to ask you about,’ she said. ‘I had a bit of bother last night, during my class.’
‘OK. I’m on my way to a meeting now.’ He pulled an eloquent face. ‘But I’m free later. I’ll come along to your staff room – four-thirtyish?’ He directed a smile at her that made her feel pleasantly buoyant, and she turned towards her staff room. Chatting with Rob Neave was one of the grains of sugar in the otherwise worthy muesli of Debbie’s working life.
The lie on Debbie’s timetable was that Friday morning was her morning off, as payback for her evening class. The lie on her contract was that she worked a thirty-five-hour week. She was usually at her desk by ten on Friday mornings, catching up with her marking and the never-ending paperwork that was now a feature of the job.
She let herself into the small room she shared with Louise Hatfield, who was in charge of the English section which, these days, meant her and Debbie, and the changing faces of part-time staff who were employed through an agency. When Debbie had started at City, the English section had consisted of five members of staff, but financial crises and falling student numbers had led to a series of early retirements, and now there were just Louise and Debbie. ‘There goes my empire,’ Louise had remarked to Debbie at the end of last term. ‘Our days are numbered too. You mark my words, girl.’
Debbie had been hoping that Louise would be in the staff room, but the locked door told her that she must still be teaching – so no one to talk to. She began to sift through the pile of mail on her desk. She was tired. When she’d gone to bed, she hadn’t been able to sleep, and had lain awake listening to the radio until gone three. Now she was at her desk, she couldn’t concentrate. She wanted to talk to someone about the odd scene at the station the previous night, laugh about it to get rid of the lingering feeling of – what? – dread? – that the silent figure had evoked.
Don’t be stupid. It was nothing.
She sighed and turned over the pile of post that had arrived on her desk that morning. Most of it was circulars and advertising from companies selling textbooks and training. Bin the lot. There were a couple of memos, one from the principal about an audit of class registers, and one from the union about the ever present threat of redundancy.
Debbie ran her hand through her hair, worried. She felt vulnerable. She wasn’t sure how she would manage if she lost her job. There was no point in thinking about it for the moment. She had other things on her mind – like marking. She pulled her work folder towards her, and tried to pin back a lock of hair that had freed itself from its confinement of combs. The disturbance brought the whole lot down round her shoulders, and she irritably pulled it back off her face and wound a rubber band round to hold it. Fifteen A-level essays to mark, and about thirty GCSE pieces. She picked up the first one and started reading.
She wasn’t even halfway through at twelve-thirty when hunger drove her over to the canteen in the Moore building.
Fridays usually weren’t too busy in the canteen. Most students didn’t have classes on a Friday afternoon, and a lot of those that did ‘wagged’ it. Debbie collected a mixed salad from the salad bar, struggled with her conscience and got a side order of chips, and looked around for somewhere to sit.
‘Hey, Debbie!’ Tim Godber, media studies lecturer, journalist manqué and at one time a lover of Debbie’s, was waving her over.
‘Hi, Tim.’ Debbie was wary. She’d been very attracted at one time, but once they had fallen into bed together after a departmental party, he’d turned into a game player who’d tried to control and manipulate her through different hoops via charm and indifference, and Debbie was nowadays more put off than interested. They’d gone out for drinks together a couple of weekends ago, and again ended up in Debbie’s bed, but she’d told herself the next morning that that was the last time.
He pushed his hair back from his forehead and moved his empty tray to make space at the table for her. ‘How are you, sweetheart?’
‘I’m not your sweetheart.’ Debbie had learnt to be brisk. ‘And I’m fine. How are you, lover boy?’
‘I’m not your lover boy, and I’m fine too.’ Tim no longer found it necessary to charm Debbie. They chatted in a desultory way as they ate, exchanging gossip from their different staff rooms. Debbie was fielding an invitation for a drink, when there was a flurry of discord from the coffee bar at the far side of the canteen, shouts and the sound of breaking china – breaking glass – that meant either horseplay or a fight. She got up from the table to see what was happening, though she had no intention of doing anything about it. Some of the young male students could be quite intimidating. Someone seemed to be dealing with it anyway. The shouting had died down. Rob Neave was talking to a group of students over where the trouble had been.
Tim, who had no more desire than Debbie to get involved in student fights, looked relieved, but continued to watch the situation with interest. ‘Machismo fascismo,’ he said, ‘wins out every time.’ Debbie looked at him. ‘Your friend the ex-policeman. The one laying down the law over there.’
He did look a bit authoritarian, actually, but Debbie was damned if she was going to agree with Tim about it. She liked Rob Neave. ‘I don’t think he’s laying down the law. Why should he be doing that? He’s just sorting them out. Is he an ex-policeman?’ Debbie thought that she ought to have known it.
Tim knew everything. It was partly his journalist’s love of gossip, and partly his connections at the local newspaper. ‘That’s his job. Security, antivandalism, keep the buggers down. You remember that business with the lift last term?’
Debbie shook her head. Tim’s story gradually came out about how some students at the end of last term had vandalized one of the lifts in the Moore building so badly they’d jammed it, trapping themselves inside. When they pushed the alarm button and summoned a rescue party, Neave, working the situation out, had delayed the rescue for two hours, claiming they couldn’t get the lift moving. The caretakers had stood around outside the lift, threatening to light a fire in the shaft. By the time the pair were released, they were pretty subdued, and the college authorities, faced with a bill for the lift repair, weren’t in any mood to listen to complaints. Debbie laughed as he got to the end of the story. Tim was a good raconteur. ‘Anyway,’ he went on, ‘the railway strangler has struck again.’
‘What?’ Debbie dropped her fork.
‘Didn’t you hear? It’s been all over the radio this morning. It’ll be in the paper as well, I should think. They found a body on the line last night.’
Debbie felt cold. ‘Where? When last night? Who was it?’
‘On the way to Mexborough, I think. They haven’t given a name and they haven’t said it’s