Fiction series: two
This is the second story in a series. The first is here.
two
It was Tuesday and the girl’s alarm went off at seven. The morning was grey and cold. She pushed herself out of bed and walked groggily to the bathroom. Her flatmate was in the kitchen, she could hear him filling the kettle at the tap. The gas flames roared quietly as they ignited. The girl closed the bathroom door and sat down on the toilet. When she finished she washed her hands under the cold tap and then splashed some of the water back up to her face. The cold made her skin ache, it woke her up, she took a deep breath and glanced at the grey face in the mirror. She had a lecture at eight.
She walked back into the bedroom and looked at the pile of exercise books on the floor by her bed, her name written in black vivid on the front of the notebook at the top of the pile; Ina Redwood. She bent over and picked up the pile and shoved it into the backpack slouched on the floor beside the books, then dropped the bag onto the bed. She got dressed in the clothes she wore the day before, there wasn’t much to think about. At the last minute she remembered to pull a book off the bookcase and add it to her bag; Wide Sargasso Sea. She had an essay due.
The kitchen was empty, just how she liked it. Ina pulled the loaf of Vogel’s from the fridge and the butter and the jar of Pam’s mixed berry jam and hurriedly put it together. The sandwich would do for breakfast. She stood at the sink, filled a glass with water and drank it down in one go. Then she opened the dishwasher and pulled out the lidded ceramic mug she used for takeaway coffee, pushed it in beside the books in her backpack, and zipped the bag up.
Ina left the house sixteen minutes before her bus was due to arrive, and she would have to jog to make it on time. The sky was lightening as she ran down the hill, the ground still damp from last night’s rain. The bag swung up and down, jolting against her shoulder blades as it landed. She wondered about the state of the sandwich. She was starting to properly wake up now, now that she was out in the brisk morning air with morning light, muted and cloudy as it was, filling her eyes. She thought about the day. The lecture was for Victorian Lit, which was usually interesting. And she would be meeting Ngaio beforehand, if she got there in time.
The bus pulled up and she crossed the road to meet it. It was almost full with students and office workers, the early morning rush. Ina took the last fully empty seat and slid across to the window. She pulled her headphones out of the bag and connected them to her phone. It was definitely another Cure day, she’d gone to sleep listening to Disintegration the night before, and Love Song was up next. Whenever I’m alone with you. However long I stay. She adjusted the head phones and then looked up. The bus was winding its way along the foot of the hill, on one side the houses perched on the edge, and on the other they stretched out in hazy rows, almost as far as she could see.
Ina arrived at the coffee cart in front of the entrance to the lecture theatre with six minutes to go. The queue was three people long, the coffee would have to wait. Ngaio would be standing on the left of the side entrance to the theatre. At five to eight Ngaio would go in and find a seat. She did not like being late. She was careful, organised and measured. Nothing happened in a rush, nothing happened unless she had thought it over first. But there she was. Standing with her back facing the doorway, her head of dark hair just visible over the crowd of students making their way into the lecture theatre. She turned and saw Ina threading her way through the crowd and smiled.
The lecture was unmissable really, on account of the essay which was due at the end of the week. Ina was not a conscientious student but she knew a good opportunity when she saw one. She pulled out an exercise book from her bag and opened it. Ngaio had convinced her that taking notes by hand was better for the brain, so Ina lugged exercise books as well as her laptop to university each day. Beside her Ngaio was arranging a collection of pens and pencils above a black bound art journal. Ngaio didn’t just write her notes by hand, she drew them. Her notes were a collection of images, symbols and words, not easily interpreted. Ina would watch her draw out of the corner of her eye. Ngaio was always more interesting than the lecture.
By the time the lecture was halfway through, the lecturer’s voice had started to drone. Ina fixed her eyes on the screen floating above his head. The slide showed the cover of the first edition of Wide Sargasso Sea, a green scene of exotic palm trees and other tropical plants, with a white colonial style house in the background and a woman with black hair standing in the middle of the green. It was a beautiful scene, yet the woman’s face was blank.
Having read half the book Ina knew the woman was unhappy. She knew this was partly because of the man standing in the background in front of the verandah of the house, and partly because of a whole lot of other bigger things, like loneliness and colonisation. Ina could see that when the book was viewed from the front, the house was gone, the man was gone, and the woman stood alone amongst the green. The more Ina looked at the image the more it annoyed her that the lecturer had chosen to show the book cover that way, the book lying split open so that the back of the cover and the front of the cover merged into one image. By the end of the lecture she’d completely zoned out.
On the way out Ina leant over and asked Ngaio if she wanted a coffee. She nodded, and as the crowd dispersed across the quad they walked to the coffee cart. “I have a lab in half an hour,” Ngaio said. “Maybe I could walk with you?” Ina suggested. Ngaio smiled. “I have to get there early.” They stood side by side in the queue, shoulders almost touching. “I can’t believe that lecture,” Ina said in a low voice. “Why is a man teaching Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea? Seriously.” Ngaio laughed. “What did you expect?”
Ina and Ngaio had met the year before, as first years in the New Zealand lit paper. They were in the same tutorial group, and when Ngaio had presented on early Maori poetry, Ina had talked to her afterwards and asked her if she wanted to meet for coffee sometime. Ngaio wrote poetry herself, and one day she’d invited Ina to open mic night. Ina watched her recite a poem, half in English and half in Te Reo, about a woman she’d loved, and couldn’t take her eyes off her.
Was Ina gay? Good question. A question Ina had asked herself, without finding the answer. Her mother had taken her to church when she was little, and had told her in no uncertain terms that God loved people who did the right thing. Her mother had also said at some stage, God knows how it came up, that homosexuals were going to hell. Ina had developed an early drive to do the right thing, and became obsessed with needing to know what the right thing to do was in any given situation. She stopped going to church when she was twelve, but the drive continued, regardless of her lack of religion. She’d kissed a girl at a party in high school, but didn’t everybody have a story like that?
The pair stood outside the Biology block drinking coffee and talking. Ngaio wanted to know what Ina was doing for the Victorian Lit essay, and whether Ina wanted to meet to work on it together. Ina did. Ina wanted to know if Ngaio was keen on dinner one night, and yes, Ngaio was. Ina also wanted to know how Ngaio’s hair would feel if she touched it gently, but she managed to hold that thought in. She watched Ngaio walk away towards the doors of the building and felt her heart rise up in her chest like a lump that kept getting bigger, like something that was about to outgrow the limits of its previous existence, and break things in the process.