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‘Don’t be silly.’ Samantha adds the milk and sugar and stirs the tea.
‘Hello.’
She turns to see Sean shambling in, talking all the while. He is on time, he tells her, in case she didn’t know, and goes on to explain in some considerable detail that he came on public transport today as the roadworks were ongoing. Daphne sips her tea, her colour returning. She glances up and gives Samantha a beautiful smile.
The others file in. By midday, seven students are sitting ready for the class to begin, but Reggie is still missing. Perhaps he didn’t enjoy last week’s class and has decided not to come back. Maybe he is the author of the horrid poem – a parting shot after a disappointing first lesson. No. No, it can’t be.
Samantha pulls back her shoulders, faces them. She will not be intimidated by four lines of silly poetry.
‘Hello, everyone. Looks like Reggie might not be joining us today, so I’ll crack on. I read your poems and they were all very good. Very amusing, well done.’ She hands out their work, making sure to give a little word of encouragement to each student in turn. It was such a small task, but these early attempts are important, she feels, for building the necessary confidence to tackle harder, perhaps more exposing work. Whilst they’re in this room, it is her job to make them feel safe.
Even if she herself doesn’t.
Once everyone has their poem in front of them, she rests her bottom against her desk, crosses her feet and takes out the remaining sheet of paper.
‘So, there was one extra piece.’ She waves the sheet as casually as she can manage. ‘Anyone?’ She tries to decipher all their faces at once. She doesn’t want to read out the poem; it is too unpleasant, has affected her too much and she doesn’t think she can give it the flippancy it requires. Sean sips his coffee. Jenny tears the end off a croissant and shakes her head.
‘It’s on a plain sheet, no lines,’ she adds. ‘No? Anyone remember writing two poems, perhaps one with my name in it for a joke? It’s OK, I’m not angry or anything, and it’s a perfectly good clerihew. I was just curious who wrote it, that’s all. Perhaps handed it in by mistake? No?’
No one looks away. No one coughs or fidgets. Nothing. Which leaves Reggie. But not for one second can she imagine that lovely Reggie is capable of anything mean-spirited. Besides, it doesn’t really seem like his sense of humour, which is warm and harmless and, frankly, funnier. But then, she doesn’t know Reggie. She doesn’t know any of them, not really. She doesn’t even know if this poemismean.
But no one owning up is worse than someone admitting to it.
‘All right,’ she says, hearing herself falter. ‘Let’s … let’s have a look at your limericks.’ A faint fog of stress clouds her brain a little; she has to steel herself to persist, to force the confidence back into her voice. ‘How did you all get on?’
Like kids, they mumble and fidget and glance at each other.
‘I enjoyed it enormously,’ Daphne says, the colour returned to her cheeks. ‘I haven’t written a limerick since primary school. And I never owned up to that one.’
The others laugh.
‘I find difficult,’ Lana says.
‘That’s OK.’ Samantha notices, can’t help but notice, the speech patterns in Lana’s second language. ‘We’ll try again once we understand what we’re aiming for, how does that sound?’
Lana nods. It has to be said, her intense seriousness is really quite unsettling.
For the next hour, Samantha usesThere was an old man from Peruand other popular limericks to teach them about rhyme and meter. She gets them to tap the beats on the desks. The familiarity will, she hopes, take the fear of poetry away. Peter was working last night, so she didn’t run the class through with him, and she is pleased now to see her own ideas being enjoyed. Together they reverse line lengths, try lines with too many syllables, make limericks that don’t rhyme. Together they discover what happens when the rules are broken.
‘So if the line length is wrong or the rhyme is off, you lose the comic effect, see? Like a mistimed joke.’ She returns their smiles, feeling that she has communicated something. ‘For those of you wanting to write comic dialogue, that’s something to think about later perhaps – rhythm, timing.’
Still Lana looks unsure. Samantha makes a concerted effort to keep meeting her eye. Together the class corrects a ‘broken’ limerick by rearranging the lines into the correct shape.
‘The trick is to keep playing,’ she says. ‘If you just keep playing until you get everything spot on, you’re basically manipulating language. You’re bending sentences into different shapes, for different effects. You’re putting yourself in control. Once you put yourself in control of things like word order, punctuation and all the things that make up writing, once you understand how those things create particular effects, you step from the world of writing for your own daily needs into the world of writing as an art form, which is basically telling lies. If you tell longer and longer lies, you become a writer. You gain all the power and arrive at your own truth.’
It is a satisfying note on which to end the class. The students give a hum of appreciation, which lifts Samantha’s spirits, almost makes her forget her sliver of unease.
‘If any of you have limericks to hand in,’ she says, ‘just leave them on my desk.’
A scrape of chairs, the indeterminate rustle of notes and coats, of stuff going back into bags, chatter.
Samantha gathers her things, pretends to be glancing up only to smile, say goodbye and acknowledge each sheet of paper as it lands, when in reality she is watching for another anonymous sheet, the hand that delivers it. Tommy looks a little red around the eyes, Daphne squeezes her arm and waves goodbye. Lana gives a perfunctory nod.
‘Thanks,’ Samantha says, and, ‘Cheers,’ and, ‘That’s great.’
Aisha and Jenny stop a moment.
‘See you next week then,’ Aisha says.
