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She looks like she wants to add something more, so I say nothing. I am desperate to know more about her, her life, her aspirations, anything to give me a glimpse into her world beyond the confines of the department.
‘I volunteer with a community youth group and sometimes they meet right after school which makes it difficult for me to go if I’m meant to be here, obviously.’ She smiles. ‘So I try to bank some hours so I can go once a month.’
I shouldn’t have been shocked and yet I am. ‘What do you do there?’ I ask.
‘It’s mainly art students. So, I help them paint. Give them tips, constructive critique, encouragement. That sort of thing.’
‘You’re an artist then? You paint?’ I want to know more. I don’t want her to stop.
She almost looks uncomfortable at the question, and I’m worried I’ve overstepped. ‘No. I’m more of a critic, I suppose, although I hate that term. I’d love to say benefactor, though I don’t have any money I could give to someone to paint their days away. How about an art guide and facilitator who one day hopes to become a curator?’
The quiet, helpful Leyna fancied becoming an art curator? I never would have guessed. Maybe we do have more in common than simply being trapped in the same workplace.
‘Sorry, I have to go,’ she says, adding, ‘I’m meeting a friend.’
‘Of course,’ I say, trying to hide my disappointment.
‘See you Monday. Have a nice weekend.’ She flies past me and hurries out of the department.
I watch her walk away and smile to myself. That woman is going to be the death of me. Sometimes I wonder how I’m supposed to work here without constant thoughts of Leyna filling my mind. I used to have some control, but the more I see her, the more I know about her, the harder it’s becoming not to think about her.
I take the photocopies from the mail rack and head back to my office. I grab my coat and bag and just before I lock up, I pick up a PhD thesis that was I meant to read days ago. I shove, I meangently place, the thesis into my backpack.
I know it’s likely a waste of time to bring the thesis home. The motivation to read three-hundred pages on Byron and Shelley, was simply not there. Realistically, I’m probably not going to read it until next week. There’s no time to procrastinate like the present.
As I step out of the English Department building, the cool, crisp October air strikes my skin. Unlike so many others, I actually enjoy this time of year as the leaves begin to fall and the sun becomes an inconstant visitor, granting its cooling rays only occasionally, grey skies and misty drizzle taking its place instead.
This evening, however, the sun is low and dazzling as I make my way across campus, up the hill, and cut across St. Mary’s College car park. It’s one of the oldest colleges at the university and one of the nicest places for the students to live on campus. I notice some of the stones are turning a darker grey, where water has damaged it over time. It all adds character to the already impressive buildings with the broad stone steps which lead to the front doors. There are students milling about outside the college, on the steps and on some of the low walls. I keep my head down and continue my brisk pace. The setting sun in the distance blinds me as I walk right into it but I don’t mind. It’s a welcome change from the usual grey, dreary weary so typical of the North East of England. There are some years it feels grey and damp from October through to April. The sun was something to be cherished. Worshipped even.
The brisk walk home serves a purpose as well. The half-hour journey functions as a barrier in between the stresses of my dysfunctional work life and the stresses of my dysfunctional private life.
And to be honest, there wasn’t much of a private life to talk about at the moment.
I’d been seeing someone a few months ago but it had fizzled out. As I knew it would. And, if I was being honest, I only wish it had fizzled out sooner. Nothing bad had happened, and maybe that was the problem.
It was just dull.
The thing was, she was fine. Sex was fine. Outings were fine. Everything had beenfine.
But nothing was exciting. And I knew it was me. I just couldn’t devote the energy to make it into something it wasn’t. So it went the way things usually did, because it wasn’t the first time I’d been through this. She got fed up waiting for me to commit and eventually decided I wasn’t worth the wait. My buddy, Iain, calls me a commitment-phobe which I think is a bit extreme. I happen to think time is precious so why waste it with someone or doing something that doesn’t enrich your life?
I smiled to myself. Had Iactuallyjust admitted that I’d rather be doing something else other than having sex with a perfectly normal woman? Good job I hadn’t admitted that out loud in the pub. Dalton and Dom both would never have let me live that one down.
Commitment and relationships just aren’t my thing. Maybe I’d never met the right person but now that I was approaching forty, I was resigning myself to the fact that I might never find the right person. I tried to put those boyish worries out of my head. I had a career, I was a professor at a top Russell Group university, and I had great friends outside of the English Department. I didn’t need a woman to feel whole or complete. My life is perfectly acceptable—just as it is.
I unlock the front door and let myself into the cool, slightly damp house. Are there any houses in England at this time of year that aren’t damp? The first thing I do is turn on the central heating. The days are getting shorter, and the temperature is dropping which means that I am always returning to a cold house. An empty house, cold or otherwise never used to bother me in my twenties. This was probably because my first ten years at the University had been a blur. It had been all about getting promoted to Professor. The job had kept me busy, and also away, outside of Castle Eden. I’m amazed at how much time an academic can spend travelling in a year, if they really want to. I was sure some of my colleagues spent more time out of the university than they did in it. As a young academic, conference trips all around Europe—Berlin, Paris, Barcelona—had been fun, but with tenure secured, I am starting to wonder about the other things beyond work that I am missing out on.
So, these days, I keep busy, I keep my mind active and my schedule packed to stop me from dwelling on the existential reality of being in my late thirties and having no family, no wife, and not even a girlfriend.
I make a quick dinner, just a simple pasta, and I drink a cold beer while it cooks. I place some logs into the cast iron wood-burning stove set against the back wall of the kitchen. These old Victorian mid-terrace houses all have the kitchens on the lowest floor. Not quite a basement because it’s not below ground level. But these houses sit on a steep hill, like so many around here. I can walk into the long, narrow back garden through a door in the kitchen. And it’s absolutely freezing so I put extra wood in.
When I’m done, and suitably relaxed, meaning when university deadlines and student problems are sufficiently out of my mind, I pour myself a whiskey and put on some music. Jazz. The familiar sounds of brass and piano coalescing into a symphonic deluge nourish my soul. It triggers something inside of me and I like to think of it as an artistic light switch.
I don’t know why, but I recall a recent conversation I had with my mother and can’t get her words out of my head.
You used to paint...
And then I think of Leyna and her desire to become an art curator.
