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
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
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