11. Joan?

And some thoughts on coffee, dates, dust, and valiance

(Note for those who haven’t read earlier tales: ‘AF’ is an Imaginary Friend’ who lives in my brain. ‘Richard’ is a cat. ‘Samson’ is a friend and a liar.)

This morning I overslept. George had already left. The sun was revving up and there was the wonderful aroma of coffee from the café downstairs. Although I usually prefer tea first thing, this morning the desire to drink a cup of bitter coffee, milk no sugar thanks, was very strong indeed. And I really wanted my coffee contrasted with the sweetness of a bit of honey on buttery toast. Or no, maybe not toast but a date or two instead, plump, and tacky to the touch, which of course puts me in mind of Jerusalem during one of those rare bloodless gaps in its history of grotesque cruelty.

And now I’m smelling the tarry-scented cigarette smoke exhaled by the old men while they sip their coffee outside their café in the shade, maybe eating a bit of date-filled pastry, chatting and thoughtfully rubbing their stubbly cheeks which makes a raspy noise while they consider the wisdom or foolishness of what their friend has just said. As they’ve done for generation upon generation. From there I’m remembering Highway 1 heading towards the Dead Sea with its weird beauty, its view over to Jordan, its encroaching sinkholes. I remember that once before on that route I’d met a camel at a petrol station, all acerbic pungency and ill or good humour, hard to tell with camels, what with their ambiguous set of jaw. She was hitched to a petrol bowser, chewing her cud and grinning sardonically. Yeah right, see me, ship of the desert, refuelling. What’s so funny? 

And there’s dust, lovely dust, many motes of it picked out by the sun’s rapt attention; yes, and what about dust’s scent, that almost-no-scent, its dryness and reliability. No matter what, dust will descend over any scene, just give it time. 

Richard says, Prrh gnuiou—So get yourself a coffee then, and but first I’d like some breakfast, Person. A wild boar or two will do. 

So: out of bed, pull a shirt on, a goodly dark red, and a pair of trousers, green and blue stripes and yes, AF, I know my taste tends towards the clownish but it’s a harmless pleasure. I go out the door and along the veranda to the kitchen, obey the instructions of the cat, who is well pleased, then as there’s that nip in the air which shouldn’t be there as it’s the wrong season, I don a big scarf involving colours that some might consider clashing but which make me feel dashing, perfectly aware that my old frenemy whom I’ve never met, Martin Amis, would’ve considered that rhyme trite but it gave me a little heart-tweak, so stet, Mart, even if you’re dead. 

I head off downstairs, say hi to my friend Gentle Serif, who is passing by with Barns, the excellent Labrador with a joyously frothing leer and arthritic hips. I scratch Barns behind the ears, then notice he (the man, not the dog) is looking gloomy.

Everything ok, Gentle? 

Not so perfectly ok. Bobby’s taken my desk. Gentle regards me with his solemn hazel gaze, and sighs.

That lovely old rolltop you inherited from your dad?

He nods wordlessly.

And just last week it was the car. The break-up with Bobby was hard, because Serif loved Bobby. I never really got it. Bobby could be mean, nothing new there. Also, stupid. But there you go. Love. 

Yes. Serif looks close to tears. I’m much sadder about the desk than the car, he says quietly. Fuck the car.

This was an unusually harsh utterance for Serif. I feel for him. I tell him so. He nods his appreciation but keeps on his way. It’s clear that he doesn’t want me to see him cry over the loss of his desk (and Bobby. And the car, just a bit).

Entering the café I say hi to sleepy-eyed Imelda (she takes a while to wake up, inconvenient for people who have to make an early start each morning). She comments on the sunniness of this chilly day, a statement with which I agree, then place my order, which includes a few of the dates she lets me keep in her cupboard, not minding that I don’t always buy a croissant or raisin toast because after all I do drink their coffee fairly often. I take a seat outside in the cold sun. Moments later, I see the enigmatic Joan, the statuesque woman and statistician who job it is to measure the depth and breadth of the spiritual pain that arises in response to nature’s reactions to the depredations of humans. 

Those extremes of heat and cold and moisture and dryness that are increasing in frequency and violence: what are they but last-ditch efforts of the planet to clear us humans off the bleeding, aching world, once and for all? Just go, says Gaia, as we stand at the door like 10 billion bewildered husbands whose blindly selfish or intentionally brutal acts (what’s worse—stupidity or cruelty?) have twisted her face into an unrecognisable mask of anguish. But what’d I do? hubby says, holding out his hand to touch her, to placate her, to get another chance, and she just says, Enough! Get out.

But Joan. I was talking about Joan. There she is, she who calculates our grief, she of the splendid tigery tresses (yes, alliteration—what’s your problem, Amis?) and that sphinxy look about her which is really very compelling. She’s spanned two of the three steps in one leggy stride. She and her friend the wolfhound are at once gangly and graceful. Clearly they’ve just come from a morning walk along the beach as she’s carrying her green sandals in her hand and the dog is very sandy. She has on a heavy scarf over another one of those shifts, a tawny colour, with a broad band patterned with tiny black dots at the hem, which is made of a double layer of fabric and therefore heavier than the rest of the dress, making it hang nicely from her square, rather wide shoulders. 

She and the wolfhound make a handsome pair, that’s for sure. I want to ask her to join me but as I’ve never met her that would be strange. I can’t even deliberate over whether or not to invite her because it is just not possible for me to speak to a person to whom I have not been introduced, and that’s a fact, a final, absolute fact. Sad. But then she approaches me and asks if she might share my table. She has the most stunning smile. Radiant. I smile too, and indicate the spare chair, noticing that that chair is in fact the only spare chair at an outside table. Luck!

She orders coffee. Dazza brings it shortly. Joan and I sit together companionably watching the cockatoos land on the bins lined up on the street (it’s Tuesday) and do what they can to prise the lids open to get at the delectable stuff inside. One manages to do this; the others flock flappily, skraaarkingly, gorgeous sulphur crests perking aggressively, but then the garbage truck comes just in time to avert cocky war and they scatter. Joan chuckles appreciatively. I decide I like her. I offer her a date, which she accepts. 

I’m Leonora, she says. (Joan is Leonora? Samson! Godsake.) And this is Malcolm, she adds, scratching the wolfhound behind the ears. Malcolm Wolfhound settles down, his head on his paws. Nice to meet you, she adds. You live nearby? 

Her voice sounds a bit parched, almost burnt. It’s dry, but it doesn’t crackle—you know those crackly voices that seem half-pushed from the back of the throat and sound self-consciously self-important? Well, nothing like that. Leonora’s voice is like toffee with lighter glints in the caramel, more salty than sweet, and faintly dusty. I like caramel. I like dust.

I tell her yes, I live in the flat upstairs, then I ask her about her plans for the day, that tried-and-true method of finding things out about people you find interesting without asking stupid questions about their jobs. 

I’ve got a few days off, she says, and stretches leoninely, adding that she has a lot of marking to do, though, which is occasionally amusing. (Marking? What sort of marking is done by a statistician?) The notions they have, she says, without finishing the sentence, but widening her eyes at me. I notice that they’re a lightish brown, almost amber. And, she adds, their calculations are a bit of a treat sometimes.

So, a teacher. Of something that requires calculations. But oh, the Samsonian fibs! I discover that she’s just taken up a post at the local school. 

Speaking of Samson, I now see him on the street, the devil. He’s about to come up the café steps, but then he sees us together, pretends he hasn’t and keeps walking instead. I’m not sure if Leonora saw him, but Malcolm did. He’d raised his heavy head, thumped his tail a couple of times. So he and Samson are friends, it seems. Interesting… But Samson continues on his way, I daresay feeling awkward about what ‘Joan’ and I might be discussing. Malcolm’s tail subsides and he sighs philosophically. 

Later, after Leonora and I finish our coffee and she departs, I go back upstairs to the flat and out onto the veranda with my laptop, thinking I’ll catch up on a bit of marking too. Richard is curled up into a tight ball of catness on the cane couch, so I sit on the chair, not wanting to disturb him because this is the hour he always allocates to the couch. I open the laptop and the horrible Comments function in the Canvas platform, which is made not for human beings with nerves and muscles and bones but for bodiless amalgams of code, fuelled by odious devilry that hates all animate life so for spite it cruels your skeleton from wrists to back to shoulders with its niggledy little boxes and hyperactive highlighting function in a tiny fucking font. 

I find my mind isn’t on the task, even though it was an interesting essay I’d set and I was actually quite keen to find out what the students thought of the role of satire in contemporary political commentary. Instead, I get up and go out on the veranda and put one leg up on the railing for a hip stretch, repeat with the other. Then balance on toes and raise arms overhead for back and shoulders. Dick looks on with pity. I reflect upon The Lies of Samson. Did he tell me her name was Joan and that she was a statistician because he wanted her all to himself, to love and mythologise, and reckoned I’d have little interest in a statistician called Joan because ‘Joan’ is old-fashioned and statistics are dry? That would be snobbish. Does he think I’m a snob? But wouldn’t he have to be a snob to think that a statistician named after a great-aunt couldn’t be an interesting person? He’d be projecting that snobbery onto me unfairly, because I’m not prejudiced against statisticians or Joans. 

A kookaburra yells to his mate, Oiee oie oi oioio aahhhh where’d you put my dead rat? Eh? Ehehehahhh ahh ahhhh… Actually, come to think of it, I’ve never previously considered whether I’m prejudiced against statisticians, as I’ve never met one. Then again, why would Samson invent studies for this statistician that measure grief and manias; that is, why would he invent for her an infamously dry profession but then irrigate it with talk of the psychic costs of planetary plunder, cos fuck the world, greed is good? Eh? Eheheh aha ah eh?

AF perks up as I deliberate. He says: Joan’s project is fascinating even though it’s Samsonian make-believe and her name’s not Joan. But it’s probably very tough on the spirits. Poor Joan. Um. Leonora.

I agree, AF. Samson’s invented a ‘Joan’ whose work seems pedestrian but whose nature is actually very bold.

Even valiant, adds AF.

Valiant. There’s glamour in valiance. Samson’s keen on glamour. 

That’s not a word, You, corrects AF. Valiance, really. 

And, I continue, ignoring AF’s literalism, Samson probably sees nothing very glamorous about being a primary school teacher, so instead he’s invented a valiant crusader armed with lists and numbers rather than a sword. But there’s true valiance in the teaching profession, especially the teaching of children. Princess Valiant the Indomitable, entering small rooms filled with thirty diminutive but fierce little anarchic solipsists and trying to make sense to them! What do you think, AF?

Leonora the Lionheart. The golden lioness with her cubs. Could be, You. Or perhaps Joan/Leonora is the liar and she is in fact Emma, a meteorologist, or Anna, a proctologist,

or Ariadne the yarn un-spinner from the labyrinth of the minotaur, gadzooks! 

Samson takes experiences he’s had and things or people he sees and juggles the idea of them like coloured balls, and when they fall he admires how they land, picks them up again, juggles some more and looks to his audience for applause. Yes. Facts he’s learned and people he’s observed are playthings to Samson. All one eternally manipulable masquerade. 

Oh well. Never mind Leonora—I’m supposed to be a teacher, so I wake up the laptop, which has gone to sleep during my reflections, navigate the university’s website to Canvas, sign in, receive my push notification, go in search of my phone to respond, locate it on top of the fridge, click the passcode, return to the veranda and reopen my class site, click on Assignments, then ‘Essay’ in SpeedGrader and thence its Comments function (and how exactly is this digital process simpler, more ‘streamlined’, than simply opening a fucking notebook? So call me a Luddite, ha—or a purple-crowned fairy-wren, whatever). 

I stretch and sigh deeply, click into the next assignment.