The Final Meeting by Ian Forth

He wasn’t looking forward to the meeting with her, which had been arranged for four o’clock. When in her presence, he felt he was under a malign spell. He would look at his feet or the ceiling, anywhere except at her face. When she was talking, the muscles in his face contorted into a sneer, over which he had no control. His replies became monosyllabic; his voice flat.

Clutching a plastic shopping bag, he reached the corridor on the third floor, fumbled to find his staff card, swiped the lock, and elbowed the glass doors open before the red timer light died. He was ten minutes late. He might be getting on, his joints stiffening, his arteries narrowing, but he preferred the silence and seclusion of the stairs. He couldn’t stand taking the lift and jostling with students yapping about trivial anxieties while spilling their cups of skinny latte.

The glass open plan office was empty; rows of plastic desks and computer screens resembled a call centre more than a university. Some colleagues had placed colourful shawls over a chair, or a school photograph among books and files in an attempt to humanise the place.

His hands shaking, he took a deep breath and stared out at the river estuary: pale grey with silver flecks. It was low tide and the mud banks were thick and slimy revealing mooring posts, a bicycle, old trainers. To his left, there were flashes of headlights from the cars grinding along the dual carriageway that sliced through the city centre. On the pedestrian bridge, suspended by steel masts and cables, several figures moved this way and that between the housing estate and the university plaza. He spotted the Romanian accordion player, small and lumpy, playing melodies from another world.

The city was full of people on the edge. It had always been dangerous to cross the bridge on your own or in the dark. Last week, a student had been threatened by a head-banger with a knife. A fluttering of fear had spread around the campus and the University had issued warnings to be vigilant.

There was that twinge again in his chest. It intensified to a throb. His vision became blurred. He checked his watch; quarter past four. He had arrived late enough to cause her to doubt whether he would turn up. He imagined her tetchy reaction.

‘You’ve kept me waiting,’ she’d say, wanting to say more.

‘I couldn’t find anywhere to park.’  

She wouldn’t believe him, but he didn’t care.

The entire floor was silent and deserted. The coat rack was empty. There was no sign of her. Where the hell was she? Had she forgotten the meeting? It was typical of her condescension to set up the meeting and then keep him waiting. He kicked a wastepaper bin. He would wait five minutes more and then leave.

In his mind’s eye he tried to picture her, but all he saw was an unflattering assemblage of images. In her late thirties, her face was … horsey, yes, but clever, very clever with dark brown eyes behind thick lenses, black hair with grey streaks. Never any traces of makeup, just healthy splodges of red on her cheeks from all her exertions. She never drank. Carrying her books around in a rucksack, the eternal student, she wore polished Kicker shoes with the little leather badge, and nondescript ankle-length skirts. Small with a loud, back-slapping voice that turned into a snort when in disagreement, but if a sensitive topic came up, she tilted her head to one side and switched to her sombre, compassionate face.

Last week, he spotted her in the corridor, bustling forward, head down, glasses misty and fogged up. She looked up with a gesture of recognition:

‘Hiya. Really glad you’re in today. Let’s try to catch up and have a cuppa,’ she said over-enthusiastically as if he were a castaway emerging from the jungle. He felt a strange force causing the muscles to the left side of his top lip start to twitch. Before he could reply, she strode off. He had a loathing for the way she walked, the purposeful, fluid movement of her arms and legs. 

When he suggested a day and a time to meet, she was never able to fit it in owing to her hectic schedule; orchestra practice, parents’ evening (she was a single parent), dinner with friends.

‘No, sorry, can’t make Monday. Tuesday? No, busy then too. Wednesday’s no good either. How about Friday morning? I can do Friday. No problemo.’

There was a bloody ‘problemo.’ She knew full well he never came in to the campus on Fridays. His children had left home long ago, he didn’t play the cello, and he rarely saw friends, yet his Fridays were sacrosanct; time at home for revising lecture notes and taking his feet off the pedals.

His colleagues, the ‘spectators’ as he calls them, were aware there was bad blood between them. In email exchanges, he changed one letter in her name to give it a comic connotation. He even inked a moustache on her staff photo in the university prospectus.

He’d air his feelings about her to whoever might listen. Just yesterday, he’d spoken to the morose Theology lecturer with thinning hair who was always nailed to his desk.

‘So, guess what? Whatsherface didn’t turn up for her lecture last night.’

‘Whatsherface? Do you mean Sarah? Really? Why was that? Was she sick?’

‘Oh no. Apparently…,’ he stretched the word , ‘she just forgot. Her email said: “Eeks! Really sorry. Had a diary malfunction.”’

He articulated the phrases ‘Eeks’ and ‘diary malfunction’ distorting his mouth to exaggerate her northern accent. Looking at his colleague’s face, he realised he had gone too far. He thought his mimicry put humour into the tale and demonstrated his resilience in having to work with her, yet his colleague’s eyes told him he was just being cruel. Yet how can they be taken in by her high five enthusiasm, her tales of do-gooder activities? His own small talk of retirement plans for moving to the country couldn’t compete with her stories of fundraising in the rain for the People’s Boutique for Refugees.

The  final straw came when he lent her a book for a course she was preparing. The book, a treatise on French poetry, had been his grandmother’s. It contained marginal notes and personal reflections in her handwriting. When he opened a page he saw her face with its wrinkles of love and concern, and was flooded with warm memories. He brought the book to the office holding it in both hands like a sacred relic.

‘Please take good care of it. It’s old and time worn but you might find some useful insights for your course.’

A month went by. She made no mention of the book and it got to the point where he even started to doubt whether he had lent it to her. Perhaps he had only imagined giving it to her. He checked his bookshelves. The book was definitely missing. Alone at night, after too much wine, he wanted to remind her, half-shrieking, that he must have the book back, yet he realised that this might make him appear unhinged. When he finally mentioned it, she said, ‘Am I bad! Silly, scatty me. I’ll bring it. Tomorrow. For sure.’  But she didn’t, not then or the next day. The book wasn’t important to her and had been forgotten.

One more minute. The clouds were darkening. As the river moved sluggishly towards the sea, he wondered what lurked beneath its surface; monstrous catfish and eels pumped up on drugs from the city’s sewers.

Glancing at the bridge while putting on his coat, he thought he recognised her, a woman with a rucksack walking at pace, as if being followed by someone she wanted to avoid. A thin figure in a hoodie and tracksuit approached and started weaving unsteadily in front of her. He performed a sinuous dance preventing her from leaving the bridge. She stopped to put down her rucksack. There was an exchange between them. The hooded figure flapped his arms and chopped the air. The woman stood straight, small, defiant.

The back of his scalp started to itch and his heartbeat accelerated. He blinked to try to clear the flashes of light twirling like diamonds in his vision. Behind the woman on the bridge, pale fish with vicious fangs and dead eyes leapt out of the river. The stranger stopped his dance and pulled back his hoodie. The woman circled around the figure and marched on to the main entrance of the building.

He sat staring vacantly, when he heard the sound of the door opening and someone putting their bag on a desk. He wanted to rush out and greet her, to throw his arms around her. They could have their meeting and clear the air. Things would be as they should between them. All he had to do was be pleasant, light-hearted, endearing, as he used to be. He’d start by offering  to clean her fogged up glasses. He told himself to calm down and not to seem too eager. She wouldn’t be expecting an exuberant welcome. But where was she? He looked around and noticed the young woman who taught Modern History sitting at her desk and switching on her computer. He was annoyed with himself at not knowing her name.

‘Hi. You haven’t seen er … have you? We had a meeting arranged. I’m sure I just saw her crossing the bridge. Was she getting a coffee at the café on the first floor?’

‘Do you mean Sarah? You haven’t heard? Sarah has been attacked. She has been stabbed. They’re waiting for an ambulance now.’

He felt the twinge again in his chest and a rising pain. He stared at the woman open-mouthed. He wanted to ask her a thousand questions, but his mind froze. He couldn’t find any words. Then he saw a book lying on his desk partially covered by his shopping bag. On the cover, there was a handwritten note.

“Hi there! I can’t thank you enough for the loan of this book. I am really sorry I took so long to return it to you. Things have been getting me down recently and I haven’t been coping too well. Long story! You were right, your grandmother’s book was so useful in preparing my course. But more than that, her notes reveal a warm, funny, thoughtful person. I see why you must treasure this book and your memories of her. But in a good way, the book might heal the awkwardness between us. I know we got off to a bad start, but I am sure we can clear the air at our meeting. The biscuits are on me. Sarah.”

Ian Forth

Image by Petra from Pixabay – an old book with a dark cover and discoloured page edges lying on a desk