Chapter Fourteen

 

 

I WAS RUNNING LATE, THE scent of wood and dusty paper and coffee invading my nostrils as I jumped stairs, then chased down samey corridors. I couldn’t even remember the name of the girl I’d just been screwing, only ten minutes ago. All I knew was that I was afraid I had leaked a bit since zipping up quickly, having left my latest conquest in a hurry when I realised I was late.

The door on the seminar room was shut when I arrived, which didn’t bode well. I checked my watch and I was three minutes late.

Nothing for it, though.

My first seminar of university and I was shitting late!

This didn’t bode well.

The teacher looked up briefly from filling in an electronic register, passing no judgement, making no comment. This entire world was so different to boarding school and I loved it.

I felt relieved to see most people were still getting their books out and putting their coats on the backs of their chairs.

There was only one available seat and so I made a beeline for it, at first not even aware of who I’d be sitting next to.

“Welcome to Approaches to Poetry, just in case any of you are in the wrong class?” He waited hilariously for someone to get up and walk out. Nobody did, thankfully. Our teacher remained seated – another oddity it’d take me time to get used to. “I’ll give you a brief introduction, outlining how we’ll be proceeding this term.”

I was nervous because I’d missed the first lecture and felt sure I’d be able to contribute nothing to this class as a result of neglecting not only that, but my reading list too. I knew I could piss about and still sail through my first year (at least I thought I could), but even so I didn’t much fancy making a fool of myself.

I’d gained a few top A levels and could have studied at any of the country’s more grandiose universities, but studying at Hull would be good for me, I’d always known. My parents (my mum more like) would never visit such a place, and besides, I fancied myself a poet and wanted to follow in the footsteps of Philip Larkin. I’d done as I was told all throughout boarding school, determined not to get into trouble, but now it was like I’d been let off the leash and I had decided that at a university like this, I wouldn’t have to work too hard.

“If you could open your books at page twenty-six,” the tutor said, and like the eager beavers we were, it being our first class, we scrambled to open them up.

I found myself staring at ‘Prufrock’ by T. S. Eliot. I had no idea who the fuck he was, nor why I was even here. I considered pressing the snooze button on my brain, when the tutor asked, “Would anyone like to start us off?”

The girl sitting next to me tentatively raised her hand. The tutor squinted, determining who it was he was looking at.

“Thank you… Liza? Is it?”

“Yes.”

“Go ahead, Liza.”

I didn’t look across at her. I still wasn’t sure if I had a cum stain on my jeans or not, meaning I didn’t particularly want to attract the attention of anyone else that day until I’d gone home and showered.

All I knew was that as she started reading, I liked her voice. Yorkshire. She was definitely local.

The class fell silent as she read audibly and with feeling…

I know people say “with feeling” all the time, like it’s so easy, but I knew from experience that feeling wasn’t so easy… not at all, in fact.

I realised she was reading with feeling, however. It was the rise and fall of her language and the diction… something about her conviction. It was maybe even the fact that she was fucking passionate, I don’t know. She just sounded… nice.

After a while, the tutor interrupted, “Thank you, Liza. Anyone else?”

Some other geek’s hand shot up and read quite well, but not as delightfully as Liza.

The tutor waited until around two-thirds of the way through, then read the last part himself.

I felt jaded by the end of it. I needed coffee and food, stat. I hadn’t been looking after myself since freshers’ week and that became more evident, the more I tried to engage my brain.

“So, in pairs, I’d like you to consider why T. S. Eliot rejected the idea of his work as surrealist.”

For fuck sake, I felt sure the man was trying to fry my brain.

A little voice to my left whispered, “I guess we’re working together, then.”

It was the girl who’d been reading earlier. It seemed that by virtue of how the class was seated that we were indeed sharing a desk, and that meant we’d already been paired without any process of selection whatsoever.

“I guess so.” I took out a pen and notebook, ready to write down whatever she had to say – because from the feel of it, I believed she knew what she was talking about.

I turned to glance at Liza – make it look like I was interested – but instead I found myself unable to take my eyes off her as she scribbled down notes. She was undoubtedly the prettiest thing I’d ever laid eyes on and had the most succulent rack.

When she looked right at me, I froze. Whatever effect she was having on me, all I knew was that it was instantaneous and arresting. It was unmistakable.

“So, his work was a stream of jumbled consciousness, right?” she said.

“I don’t know, I don’t know… I mean, I could wander around, you know… just tacking one idea onto another. Like how the café serves the most obscenely hot coffee, it’s undrinkable… and how it’s impossible to find a lift that works in the library, plus there’s never any loo roll in the union loos, you noticed that?”

She raised her eyebrows, then held out her hand. “I’m Liza.”

“Sam.”

She viewed me with interest, figuring me out. “You’ve been enjoying all the delights of halls, then?”

“Yeah. Which one are you in? Cottingham, or…?”

She smirked. “I live with my parents. Well, aside from when I stay over at my boyfriend’s. He’s a rugby player. He has his own place. I don’t really need to stay in halls.”

I didn’t know what to read into that. Was she proud of her boyfriend’s living arrangements, or disdainful of halls?

The way she was dressed in her neat skirt, tight sweater and cute tights told me she wasn’t the type to roll off a lover and head straight for a class without checking for cum stains first.

She made me feel inferior, but I was okay with that. I just knew she was my better. In that moment, I knew I would never, ever be good enough for her. She was one of those people you could tell straight away was special.

I lowered my voice, “Can we just agree this shit is a load of bollocks?”

She giggled and wafted her pen playfully in my direction, admonishing me.

“You know what? I think I know these parts better than you having grown up here and been to the university loads of times for events and stuff. If you want to know where to get coffee that won’t boil your eyes out, I can help you.”

“Sure, sure,” I agreed.

While she scribbled down some notes, I leaned in a little, pretending I was copying off her, when I was actually trying to smell her hair.

“Could you be any closer?” she asked, a comical edge to her tone. She was amused but it was also clear the girl was freaked out. I’d never wanted to smell a girl before in my life.

“What’s Liza short for then? Elizabeth maybe?”

Was she a posh Yorkshire girl? I hoped not. I really hoped she was humble and salt of the earth. Those other types of girls – the ones my mother would have preferred – didn’t interest me in the slightest.

“It’s short for nothing, although my mother’s favourite film is ‘My Fair Lady’.”

“Yes, but isn’t the character…?”

“Eliza, yes,” she told me, “but my mother’s rather uneducated. It’s Liza on my birth certificate. Just plain, old Liza.”

There was nothing plain about her, from the way she looked and sounded, to even the way she chewed her pen and wore her beauty like it was nothing but a veneer housing something much more interesting beneath.

“Anyway, I’m sure yours is short for something hideous? Right?”

I laughed, then whispered under my breath, getting a whiff of her perfume as I leaned in: “Samuel Gordon Alexander Bernard Aitken, actually.”

She turned and gawped in my face. “I think the coffee’s on me today. How gross!”

I couldn’t stop laughing at the way she seemed to have a bad taste in her mouth every time she mouthed my full name. I liked this girl. I liked how she wasn’t afraid to poke fun at my parents’ snobby choice of four bloody family names.

“Ooh shit,” she murmured, digging her elbow into my side.

I looked around the room and was shocked to see everyone staring at me and Liza. What was so entertaining about us? I didn’t know.

Then I knew.

Oh, I did.

We were the prettiest people in that class.

It was clear, though… Liza had no idea how fucking sexy she was.

I really kind of liked that about her.

It was good she had a boyfriend, though because it meant I couldn’t screw her over. I wasn’t that badly behaved I tried to take other people’s women. I only took all the women who were single. True, I didn’t promise any of them a thing, and often they cried afterwards, so it was probably safe all round that Liza was already accounted for.

I didn’t make friends easily, so it wasn’t important for me to keep in with people, not really. If I had just one friend, that’d be enough – and I think in that moment, I’d already chosen her. I’d spent all my formative years at an all-boys school and now was the time for me to discover who I really was, the big wide world beckoning. No more institutionalisation… just fucking, and drinking… and being the friend of this mysterious, precious creature…

…called Liza.