Click. L. Smyth
About five minutes into our conversation, the waiter came over and asked if Marina would put out her cigarette. It was clear from the first few words what he was going to say, but she only stared at him innocently, and continued to smoke until he’d finished giving a full explanation. There were people eating nearby, he said (his eyebrows raised, his hands rubbing anxiously against one another) – yes, there were people eating nearby and her smoke was unpleasant for them. He was awfully sorry, really he was, but would she mind … would she mind just while they had their meals? Otherwise there were tables further away.
Marina held his gaze. She sucked for a few seconds, raised her fingers to the stalk and finally plucked it from her mouth.
‘Of course,’ she said, exhaling a long plume.
Then she stubbed it in the ashtray in front of him.
It was like something from a film. I started to laugh quietly, discreetly, in a way that I hoped would show Marina I found her funny without offending the waiter.
It didn’t work. When I looked up I saw that the waiter was glaring at me. His look was so hostile – so accusing – that my apologetic reflexes kicked in and unthinkingly I blurted: ‘I’m sorry.’
He shook his head and walked away.
Marina laughed at that.
‘What did you do that for?’ she said.
‘Sorry?’
‘It doesn’t say no smoking.’
‘Oh. Yeah. Sorry.’
‘Don’t apologize,’ she said. ‘Definitely don’t apologize for me.’
Over the next few weeks we began to see each other more and more. We met for breaks outside the library, where I would stand with her as she smoked and talked, usually about the other people in our class. We sat together in seminars. We sat together in lectures. Then we started to cut lectures and just go to seminars instead. Then we started to skip the PhD-taught seminars – going to just one a week, the one led by the professor – and discussed the set books on our own.
Marina had some pretty weird ideas about literature. She thought that everything had a central meaning, and that you could pinpoint the ‘message’ of a novel or a play according to the intentions of the main character. Helpfully, she said, quite often the main character was a stand-in for the author. Thus King Lear was ‘about Shakespeare’s fear of early-onset dementia’; Anna Karenina was about ‘Tolstoy’s commitment issues’ etc. I never quite knew what she was on about, or whether she was actually joking, but she was entertaining to listen to nonetheless.
After the library Marina would often come to my room. Initially I lamented that I hadn’t put up posters or photos to make my life look interesting. But she seemed to like the fact that I was so anonymous, like a blank slate that she could draw all over. We would drink two or three bottles of wine there throughout the afternoon, and then head out to a party at one of her second year friends’ houses.
I say ‘friends’. The truth is that I never had meaningful conversations with any of them, and from what I recall Marina rarely spoke to them either. We’d spend a lot of time at parties at the fringes of conversation, smoking by ourselves, nudging each other, exchanging subtle looks. She didn’t really engage with other people – not fully. Even when she was at the centre of a big group, Marina seemed to be separate, superior, floating above everyone else – like a performer in a play. And, like a haughty actress, she regularly grew impatient with her fans.
‘Who’s that?’ I asked once, having seen her ignore a wave from a guy in Henry’s house.
‘Ugh, Robin,’ she said. ‘Henry’s housemate. He’s a dick. I can’t be bothered to do the stop-and-chat.’
Hearing her rebuff other people like this could have made me paranoid, but in fact, predictably, it had the opposite effect. It made me pleased. It struck me that for all her online popularity, for all her apparent charm and attractiveness, I was the only person who she ever really wanted to hang around with on a regular basis. When she was not with me, she was alone.
I liked that about her.
***
The librarian gives me an odd look. I have been in here for too long. Perhaps I am acting strangely, perhaps my face looks strained, perhaps I am making peculiar subconscious noises. Or maybe she knows. Maybe she recognizes me.
I pick at the skin between my fingers, watch the dry flakes break off and scatter onto the desk. It is already starting to get dark outside. I can see the tree swaying outside, the branches swooping forward to tap against the glass. They look and sound like fingers. I turn back to the desk. I flip over the newspaper so that the picture is hidden.
I don’t want to see her anymore. I don’t want to be near her.
Early November
i.
One day Marina decided that we would go to the beach. It was at this point early November – the sky was grey, a thick seasonal mist had settled over the campus, and the temperature was dipping to zero. I couldn’t imagine that a seaside outing was going to be especially pleasant. But true to form I didn’t bring this up, and my opinion wouldn’t have mattered. Marina said that she wanted to see the sea. She said that she was going to hire a car so that we could drive there.
I thought this was a lavish investment, considering we could just take the train, but I kept my mouth shut.
‘I know it seems unnecessary,’ said Marina, ‘but I like to drive.’
Marina was like that: if she wanted to do something a certain way, then she would do it irrespective of the practicalities or cost. I learned not to ask questions about her spending.
We went to a hire shop. The man behind the desk wore a name badge which said on it ‘Graham’. He called us both ‘Madam’ – this was very funny – and asked Marina which model she would like to take out.
Marina surveyed the selection of cars. After a while she settled for a convertible.
‘Oh?’ said Graham with surprise. Then he composed himself: ‘Certainly, Madam.’
Once we were strapped in, Marina turned up the music to ‘very loud’ and careered off down the road. The soundtrack of choice was early noughties R&B – she particularly liked Kelis and Khia – and I felt that there was a strange disconnect between the sinuous country roads, so English and so wholesome, and the thumping American lyrics coming out of the speakers. Marina seemed to enjoy this. When we reached a red traffic light, I remember her winding down the window and mouthing to the male driver next to us: ‘Lick it now, lick it good.’ He turned and tipped his flat cap at us.
Soon the clouds lifted and, against expectation, cool sunshine appeared in short misty bursts. Marina took this as sufficient encouragement to put the roof down, so roughly half an hour into our journey she swung the wheel and pulled into a layby. I remember her tiny green eyes darting to the rear-view mirror, her hands sliding over the plastic of the gearstick, a slim finger pushing the button below the radio control. The roof lifted up, tilted forwards and began to roll back.
‘So you’re from Walford,’ she said, as a fresh bout of wind blasted us across the cheeks. ‘What’s that like?’
It was the first time she’d asked me anything about my background and I struggled to find an answer. What was Walford like? My small, provincial town with the river running through the centre, with its functional concrete bridges, with its dusty Victorian buildings and neon supermarkets, with its tragic pubs? I thought of tweed and suede, rubber wellingtons. I thought of my