Lifesaver Read online

  With a cloying heavy sweetness on my tongue and coating my teeth, I parked the car and got out, marching far more confidently than I felt towards the main reception.

  Gillingsbury Community College looked like most modern colleges seemed to, as if the architect’s brief had been to make the building look as anonymous and nondescript as possible. I couldn’t pick out a single notable feature of it; it was more like a multi-storey carpark than a seat of learning. Yet somehow this reassured me: I was just an ordinary person going into an ordinary building. I had as much right as anyone else to be there: as much right as that elderly woman with fat arms bulging out of short sleeves over there, or that group of Middle-Eastern looking men sitting smoking on a wall, nudging each other and gazing at my… Damn! I glanced down at my clothes. Having not planned this impromptu expedition, I wasn’t best equipped for it. I was wearing saggy black jersey trousers and a very small, very tight sleeveless fuchsia t-shirt, with no bra. I slung my bag over my shoulders—luckily it had a long handle—so that its strap covered one of my nipples, and self-consciously fiddled with my ear so that my left elbow hid the rest of my chest. The men snickered and muttered to each other, sucking their cheeks into shadowy hollows through skinny rolled up cigarettes.

  I pushed through swing doors into a shabby, lino-lined lobby. A pinboard on the wall sported a plethora of wonky scribbled notices, and I couldn’t help but stop and read them before I did anything else. I was an inveterate reader of bulletin boards, I just couldn’t help myself: ‘Chest of drawers, £15—buyer collects’; ‘Clean Japanese au-pair available. Love children.’ I never knew what I expected to find on them. Maybe it was evidence of other people’s weaknesses—their spelling mistakes, their avariciousness. Or perhaps it was the opposite, perhaps I was looking for the good qualities; the hope and optimism in people which made them believe that somebody would not only buy their knackered old MFI chest of drawers, but cart it away for them as well.

  A bald middle aged man in a brown suit, with a bushy moustache and a polka-dotted bow tie, was standing behind a long countertop, behind which was a couple of desks sporting two old grey computers. Shelves full of files lined the walls, and next to me a circular wire rack drooped with different coloured leaflets in a variety of languages. The counter had a lift-up section to it, like a bar. It reminded me of the scene in Only Fools and Horses where someone lifts up the hatch just as Del-Boy, lurid cocktail in hand, tries to lean on it, and falls sideways out of sight. I could have used one of those radioactive-looking cocktails at that moment, paper umbrella and all.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  Be strong, I told myself. You’re an actor, you’ll pull it off. ‘Could I see a prospectus, please?’ There was no law against walking into a college and enquiring about its courses, was there?

  The man waved his arm expansively in the direction of a wobbly and uneven stack of A4 sized books on the floor behind me. I walked over and picked one off the top. Gillingsbury Adult Education College it said in fat letters. Be all you can be! Inside were pages and pages of course listings, in tiny black script, mostly sounding fearsomely dull, or else in some kind of arcane code: EFL with IT, TESOL Certificate Training, BCS ECDL. There were a few intriguing ones too, I noticed, particularly on the General Interest page: Classic Roasts, Haircutting for Children, an Introduction to Geology, Street Dance for Beginners, Intermediate Parchment Craft…In a moment of escapist madness I had an urge to register for everything under General Interest, but then I remembered why I was there. I sat down on a polished wooden bench, like a church pew, and quickly scanned down through the subject headings until I found ART AND CRAFT DEPARTMENT. Page 117. I flipped through to the right page, and saw a small black and white photograph of an earnest looking man sitting at a potter’s wheel, his palms embracing the wet clay. For some reasons it reminded me of the way Ken had shaken my hand when we first met. I supposed I had been like putty in his hands.

  I wondered if the picture was of Adam. It didn’t say, but looking down the listings I found A. Ferris next to several courses: Life Drawing Beginners, Life Drawing Intermediate, Basic Pottery, and Mosaics for Beginners. They were all daytime courses, starting at different dates in September—there were evening classes in the same subjects, but taught by a P. Rumbould. Adam must turn down evening work so he could be there for Max, I thought, my chest swelling with a completely unjustifiable pride. I just knew Adam was a good dad.

  Oh, stop being so ridiculous, I countered. For all I knew, Adam kept his evenings free to indulge in his coke-dealing activities or run his lap-dancing club. But somehow I felt that I was right.

  I went back to the man with the bow tie. He had begun to eat a very messy tuna salad sandwich, even though it was only eleven in the morning, and was reading the job section of The Guardian. The smell of the tuna drifted across the counter at me, making my nostrils flare involuntarily.

  ‘Excuse me? I’d like some more information about some of these courses.’

  ‘Which ones?’ He took a large bite of sandwich, dropping a blob of grey tuna onto the lapel of his jacket.

  ‘Um. The art ones. The daytime art ones.’

  I had to wait a few seconds while the man chewed exaggeratedly, jabbing a forefinger towards his mouth to indicate that he wasn’t able to respond just at that moment. Eventually he swallowed. He hadn’t noticed the spillage.

  ‘I beg your pardon. If you’d like to take the second left along that corridor behind you, you will find the Art Department. The departmental secretary’s name is Pamela Wilkins. She should be able to help you with any questions.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, glad that Adam taught arty subjects and not something nerdy and complicated like Applied Maths or Computer Aided Technology. As I walked off down the corridor, with the smell of furniture polish and school dinners in my nose - not nice, but better than the tuna sandwich—I couldn’t help but feel excited. That secretary knew Adam. May even have met Max. I slowed my pace, to give myself time to think of what to say.

  I put my head around the open door of the Art Department. It was a big, messy room, covered in a grey film of clay dust. Charcoal nudes and some abstract tapestries hung on the walls—rather good, I thought, not that I was any judge of artistic merit. I couldn’t draw the most basic of dogs without it looking like a donkey. Scarred melamine-topped tables were arranged in a horseshoe formation around the edge of the room. I remembered those tables from school—different coloured tops, and metal tubes for legs.

  There was nobody about, but just as I stepped inside I heard brisk footsteps behind me in the corridor. I hadn’t really given it much thought, but I supposed if anyone had asked me, I’d have imagined that the secretary of an Art Department would be small and slight, elfin, and would waft around distributing pastels and putting away paintbrushes, dressed in a variety of floaty, probably crocheted garments. In hues of rainbow.

  Pamela Wilkins, of course, could not have been more different.

  ‘Are you looking for me?’ she cried heartily. ‘Sorry. Just popped out to the little girls’ room.’ She pushed past me through the doorway. ‘Come in, come in.’

  I surveyed her, impressed at how any woman could care so little for her appearance. She was about four foot two, late forties, perhaps, with thick stubby legs and enormously wide hips, across which a fantastically horrible bright blue pleated and patterned nylon skirt sat, a good six inches higher round the back. She had long dull black hair, a visible, almost luxuriant black moustache, and wore not a scrap of make-up. I suppressed a vision of her leaping naked through a bluebell field, paintbrush in mouth, hair whipping around her head, stopping every now and then to daub colour onto a large canvas nearby…

  ‘If you’re Pamela Wilkins, then yes, I’m looking for you. The man on reception suggested I come and talk to you about the art courses.’

  ‘Ah, poor Wilf. Yes. I’m sure I can tell you anything you need to know about this place—been here for twenty eight years, since it was first built, I ha
ve. People say that I must have been dug in with the foundations! Dug in with the foundations!’

  Her foundations did indeed look extremely solid, although it seemed an odd thing for ‘people’ to say. I suspected that she had coined the phrase herself. I also felt like asking her why Wilf was an object of pity, but decided not to push my luck straight away. There were other, more pressing things I needed to know.

  ‘Right. Well, I’m a total beginner at art, but I quite fancy something practical—mosaics, maybe?‘ I had no idea what one might make out of mosaic. Lamp bases, perhaps, or maybe that was a bit ambitious. I quite liked the idea of smashing plates and reassembling them in different formations—there seemed something so gloriously pointless about it.

  Pamela nodded vigorously. ‘Yes, yes, the mosaic courses here are excellent. Excellent. I mean, all the courses we offer are very good, but an outstanding teacher really makes all the difference.’

  I felt strangely joyful. ‘What’s the teacher’s name?’

  ‘Adam Ferris.’

  Questions bubbled up in my throat, and I had to swallow them firmly back down. There was no reason that the departmental secretary would know much about Adam’s private life. Still, there was no reason she wouldn’t, either.

  ‘Has he taught here for long?’

  Pamela’s face lit up, and instantly I knew that she was exactly the right person to talk to about Adam. I sent a silent thank you winging its way to Auntie Lil—it could not have been easier.

  ‘Several years now, since his little boy was born—’

  Bingo! She couldn’t wait to tell me, conspiracy was collecting in the corners of her mouth and in the sideways, excited look in her eyes. Maybe my naked need to know was dragging the information out of her, like a magnet’s pull.

  ‘How old’s his little boy?’ I asked innocently. Reel her in, Anna, I thought.

  ‘Nearly five now. Adam’s really been through it with him. Terrible time, he’s had. But he’s almost five now.’ She had the really irritating habit of repeating the same information in a slightly different way.

  ‘Why? Is he badly behaved or something?’

  She looked shocked, as if I’d blasphemed. ‘Oh goodness no, he’s an angel. Angelic, he is. No—’ she lowered her voice. ‘He nearly died. He was in hospital for two years. Leukaemia, it was.’

  I tutted. ‘That’s terrible. But he’s OK now?’

  Pamela beamed. ‘Fit as a little fiddle. You’d never guess he’d been so ill.’

  ‘His poor parents,’ I said, hopefully.

  Again, I hit the target, bullseye. As Pamela opened her mouth to spill the beans, I wondered if she was this indiscreet about the private lives of all the art faculty. But she must have realized the same thing at the same time, because her lips clamped shut again, and my window of opportunity closed.

  ‘So, anyway, I would thoroughly recommend the Beginners Mosaics class. Eleven until one o’clock on a Tuesday.’

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘What kinds of things would we make?’

  ‘Whatever you like, really. Most students do small pieces at first: tiled photo frames or mirrors, or perhaps tissue boxes. Whatever you like.’

  I could think of few items less appealing than a tiled tissue box. ‘That’s lovely,’ I said, pointing at a beautiful mosaic tabletop in the corner of the room. I hadn’t noticed it before, and walked over to examine it. It was circular, with symmetrical patterns of broken flowery china embedded in swirling, flowing lines which seemed almost fluid. The china was minty green and sugary pink on white, colours which would probably look horrible to eat one’s dinner from, but were fresh and vibrant when rearranged, like atoms, into different patterns.

  ‘I’d love to make something like that.’

  Pamela frowned and shook her head. ‘We-ll, that’s a piece that one of our more advanced students has just completed. I think you’d have to talk to Adam about doing something so ambitious, I’m not sure whether he’d think it suitable for a beginner.’

  ‘I could ask him. Might there be a chance to speak to him before the start of the term? Are there spaces left on the beginners course?’

  Pamela swayed across to a shelf at the side of the room, her hips grazing table edges as she passed them. She reminded me of the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland. She’d have looked perfectly natural with a large tricornered wimple affair strapped under her chin.

  ‘Yes, I think there are still a few spaces. And I’ll just have a look at the diary, to see when Adam’s next in. You could ring for a chat.’

  ‘I don’t suppose I could have his home number?’ Maybe Max would answer the phone, I thought longingly. But I’d pushed too far.

  ‘Oh no,’ Pamela said, in a more shocked tone than I felt strictly necessary. ‘We never give out staff telephone numbers. Now, let’s see..’ She flipped through the pages of a large desk diary, liberally smeared with dried clay thumbprints. ‘Adam, Adam, Adam.’ She said his name so tenderly that I almost laughed out loud. If this woman wasn’t in love with Adam Ferris, I’d eat that lump of plasticine on the table next to me.

  ‘Yes. He will be here doing some course preparation next Wednesday. Give him a ring on this number. I’ll tell him to expect your call, shall I?’

  She waited, pen poised above the rectangle of diary space. For a moment, I couldn’t think what she was waiting for. ‘Could I have your name please?’

  Panic. Name. I couldn’t say Anna Sozi, obviously…‘Anna Valentine,’ I said, giving my stage name, unable to prevent a deep blush spreading across my chest and up into my face. Some actress I was! But I’d be better prepared next time. I’d make up an address and give my mobile number and—

  Wait a second, I thought. Next time? For the first time I realized that I was actually giving serious consideration to the possibility of enrolling on one of Adam’s courses. No matter that it was ninety miles from my house. That I was only doing it because I wanted to meet the tutor’s four year old son. That I couldn’t tell my husband otherwise he’d think I’d gone off my head. That I’d therefore have to lie about where I was going every Tuesday for weeks on end…

  All I could think about was how excited Auntie Lil would be when I told her that I’d actually done it.

  Chapter 7

  Getting home again took a lot longer. There must have been an accident on the motorway, because the London-bound traffic suddenly slowed to a five-mile an hour crawl, and I found myself stuck behind a Volvo estate with two bored children strapped into the rear-facing seats in the boot, making hideous faces at me out of the back window. It was remarkably difficult not to keep catching their eyes, since they were directly in my line of vision, so I tried to switch off, letting thoughts trail through my mind: what Max looked like; how Vicky would cope with another child; whether I’d ever get a job; whether I wanted a job; if Ken and I would ever have sex again…/span>

  As I looked to my left—the children were now pointing at me and squealing with laughter—I noticed a road sign to village whose name sounded familiar. I couldn’t work out why for ages, until eventually I remembered that when we were first together, Ken had taken me to a hotel there.

  He’d still been with Michelle then, his first wife. Michelle was his PA from his first Marketing Director job at Range Records. She was younger than him by six years: twenty two to his twenty eight. She’d wooed him and flattered him, even though for two years—by his own admission - he had treated her like dirt, dating other women but keeping her hanging on. Then something had changed. I still wasn’t sure what; maybe she’d just worn him down. She was American, and didn’t take no for an answer - whilst being sensible enough to realize that ultimatums would cut no ice with Ken. He didn’t like to be pressured.

  They ended up getting married. She’d managed to persuade Ken that she would make the perfect wife for a career man such as himself; but within six months he said he realized it had been a mistake. She’d given up work the second he’d proposed, and seemed to do nothing but play tenni
s, spend his money, and try to organise his life the way she’d organised his appointment book when she worked for him. It was she who’d first got him into his tennis obsession—he probably only learned because he hated anyone being better than him at anything.

  Michelle was there the first time Ken and I ever met. Vicky and I had both been in a production of Arthur Miller’s All My Sons in Reading, and Ken and Michelle had come for the weekend, visiting Ken’s mother. Michelle had talked Ken into coming to the theatre—I could just imagine the conversation: ‘We never do anything cultural!’,—and he had agreed. I grudgingly respected her for managing that, since Ken was just not a theatre sort of person. He still didn’t come to many of my productions.

  It was the last night, and Vicky and I were in the bar afterwards with the rest of the cast. Ken and Michelle were sitting at a small table in the corner of the bar, her with her back to me.

  ‘Check him out, he’s gorgeous,’ said Vicky, nudging me and jerking her head in his direction. ‘Bet you I can pull him.’

  I looked. He was lovely. ‘What’s your definition of “pull”? A date, a phone number, a snog?’ I asked. I knew she wasn’t serious—she and Peter had only recently got together, but there was nothing she loved more than a good old flirt. ‘Besides,’ I added, ‘he’s with that blonde woman.’

  At that moment, Ken caught us staring at him. He looked straight at me, and even from across the bar I could see how thick his eyelashes were, that his hair was black and shiny as a top hat, and his skin the burnished brown of a conker. His features were perfect, apart from a smile-shaped scar which ran from the left corner of his mouth to under his cheek. It reminded me of the punctuation mark in an old-fashioned hymnbook, the one under the end of a line to tell you to keep singing without taking a breath. I was instantly dying to know how he’d got it, but managed to contain my curiosity until our second date. I was sure that everyone else always asked him about it, and I didn’t want to be like everyone else. (He was bitten by a Jack Russell dog when he was eight. He still hated Jack Russells, which was a shame, because they were about the only sort of dog I liked).