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I don’t have time for thisis the phrase that lies beneath. Samantha’s just made notes on subtext for a class on dialogue later in the term.I don’t have time for youis another possible meaning. Marcia doesn’t exactly hang up on her, but where they usually sign off withlove you, all she says issee you later, which stings.
They won’t see each other later. Later, Marcia will go out with the friends they used to have in common, or with her boyfriend. They will see a band or go for drinks or a pizza or … do whatever people of her age are supposed to do. Whatever it is, Samantha will not join them. After Emily was born, Marcia asked her to come out once, twice, even three times. But she was too exhausted; she couldn’t get out between feeds; Peter was late back from uni.
She has not been asked since.
The class comes around once again. Samantha resolves not to ask about the limerick. Peter is right, she should not. But this is not why she stops herself from asking. Honestly? It’s because she cannot stand the thought of no one admitting to it once again, what that will do to her ability to lead the class.
No one can function properly in fear.
Reggie returns, wearing a white T-shirt with a brick design and on it the wordsPink Floyd The Wallscribbled in red. Samantha has heard of Pink Floyd, though she can’t remember from where or whom … her grandparents, possibly, when she was a kid.
‘Apologies for my absence,’ Reggie says, sliding a piece of paper onto her desk. ‘I had a hospital appointment. That’s my limerick from last week.’
‘Thank you.’ She glances down, reads enough to reassure herself.
There was a young man called Syd B
Who dreamt he was but four foot three.
Daphne arrives just as the class are settling down.
‘I took a later bus,’ she says, winking at Samantha.
Aisha and Jenny carry in takeaway coffees in bright blue cups. Neither of them looks like the kind of woman who would send a poison poem to another woman, but then what does that kind of woman look like?Bitchis a word Samantha hates, never uses, but it is the word that comes to her now: how do you spot a bitch?
Lana strides in in her own serious way. She has re-shaved the side of her head and Samantha thinks she may have a new piercing, a bolt at the top of her ear. She glances at Samantha, and while her smile is peremptory, there is no overt malice in it. Over sixty per cent of communication is non-verbal, isn’t it? Surely Samantha would pick up on any animosity? Two weeks ago, she would have said yes, absolutely. Now, her world is as solid as cloud.
Sean follows, still with his anorak zipped tight to his neck. He is carrying a motorcycle helmet
‘The roadworks on the A316 are still causing traffic delays. They’re re-laying the gas main. I took the thirty-three from Hammersmith, but then I got off and went back for my motorbike. It’s only a scooter, it’s only a hundred and twe—’
‘Great, Sean,’ she says. ‘Take a seat.’
There are seven students. Who is missing? Tommy. No, Tommy is here, his eyes red and sore-looking. He was sarcastic in that first lesson, but, frankly, he doesn’t seem compos mentis enough to write something purposefully nasty. Besides, with his self-conscious louche irony, he seems to enjoy his former drug addict status, its power to shock, and Samantha suspects he is too self-obsessed to contemplate targeting someone he’s never even met before.
Suzanne. Suzanne is missing. A flare of doubt courses through her. Perhaps she didn’t like the last class. She was very quiet. Could it be her? Samantha doesn’t think so. Her clerihew suggested a liking for daytime television and celebrity gossip magazines, and if the first poem hinted at some sort of connection with Peter, then that is highly unlikely.
‘All right,’ she says, forcing herself to focus. ‘I thought today we’d try some flash fiction …
She explains the super-short form. It is a slice of life, an odd story that captures a moment or a mood. It can leave the reader on a troubling precipice or with a lasting image. And it is prose, a break from poetry.
Together they make a word map on the whiteboard.
‘A word map is all about freedom,’ she tells them. ‘Just shout out any old random thing. There are no wrong words, no wrong ideas. The fear of getting it wrong kills creativity.’
They shout out words. They are more confident than in week one, she thinks, and this delights her. In no time, twenty words have gone up on the whiteboard: fire, sun, red … now thirty, now forty … desert, blaze, madness; boots, fight, hell.
‘This is wonderful,’ she says, her wrist beginning to ache from all the scribbling. ‘Is anyone getting a sense of a narrative at all? Anyone got a character coming out of the fog?’
‘I have an old cowboy,’ Daphne says.
‘That’s good.’ Samantha gives her a smile. ‘And do we know where he is and what he’s doing?’
A story emerges from some mysterious collective. The energy in the room is palpable.
‘An old cowboy has to bury his horse out in the desert,’ Reggie says, and Samantha sees an affectionate glance pass between him and Daphne.
‘Yes,’ she says, clearing a patch of board and scribbling sentences now.
