Mr Lynch’s Holiday

30

Dermot called from the front door: ‘I’ll be off now, leave you to it.’

Eamonn looked up from his laptop. ‘Are you going for a walk? Did you want me to come with you?’ Not Do you want me to come with you? A linguistic feint. A hypothetical offer. Dermot responded as Eamonn knew he would.

‘No, not at all. You have work to do. I don’t want to get in the way.’

‘I should get on with it really. I’ve let it mount up since Laura went.’

‘You can’t do that — you have to earn your living.’

Eamonn felt a flicker of irritation. It passed as quickly as it had come. The point was inarguable.

‘So … another walk?’

‘I’m not walking today. I’m getting a lift with your one down the way.’

His father had some strange reluctance to use people’s names. ‘Your man’, ‘the fella with the hat’, ‘your one with the limp’.

‘Which one?’

‘The Swedish lady.’

‘Inga?’

‘That’s right. Apparently there’s a big DIY place out off the motorway. She’s off to buy some stuff for her painting and I thought I’d maybe go along and pick up one or two things.’

Eamonn nodded vaguely, having already opened up his work email and become distracted.

‘OK. Well … have fun. I’ll see you later.’

He didn’t notice the door close. He stared at the screen: fifty-three assignments to mark plus the six phone tutorials he had booked in. He headed straight to the kitchen to find some kind of coffee substitute. Since Laura had gone, he’d started speaking his thoughts out aloud, issuing abrupt little snorts at his own internal commentary. He didn’t want to be the kind of person who did such things. He thought consuming less caffeine might help. He settled for a bracing pot of laugh-free yoghurt and returned to his laptop. He thought he’d just write a quick email to her, letting her know what he was up to. He liked to keep her informed. When he’d finished that, gone to the loo, checked the kitchen cupboards one more time, there was really nothing for it but to open up the Beginner-level assignments. ‘Lesson Twelve: At the Shopping Mall’. Robert was looking for a new jumper. The students had to fill in Julia the shop assistant’s half of the exchange.

R: Hello, I’d like to buy a sweater.

J:. . . . . . . . . . . . .

R: That’s nice. Can I try it on?

J:. . . . . . . . . . . . .

R: Do you have it in blue?

J:. . . . . . . . . . . . .

R: No, it must be blue, to match my blue trousers.

J:. . . . . . . . . . . . .

R: Thank you. Goodbye.

Eamonn used to think Robert was a dick, with his weird need to match his jumper to his trousers. But now, post-Laura, he felt a tenderness towards Robert. He saw Julia for who she was. Robert was a man in need of help. He clearly had no idea what he was doing. He’d evidently lost his way in life. But Julia wouldn’t throw him a line, not even to say: ‘You know, a grey sweater would look fine.’ She’d let Robert carry on searching high and low and when she saw him that night in the bar, on his own, in his matching blue sweater and trousers, she and her girlfriends would laugh remorselessly. Eamonn shook his head. Julia was a complete cow. He didn’t know how he hadn’t seen it before.

Lenguanet were based in Madrid and had contracts to provide online language tuition to civil servants across several autonomous communities. Students submitted their work online and tutors returned the work marked within an agreed time frame. In the face of massive cuts in government spending, however, many communities were cancelling their contracts and the company were laying off tutors. Having fallen badly behind, it was fortunate for Eamonn that his cohort of Asturian health workers were particularly slow in making their way through the course and that his manager was too preoccupied by the implosion of the company to check up on his activity.

The work was repetitive, enlivened only by the monthly phone tutorials that each student was obliged to complete. Eamonn had sent mails the previous night to his Advanced-level students to arrange slots for the day. He had enough self-knowledge to realize he was currently nowhere near robust enough to conduct Beginner-level phone tutorials. Although straightforward in theory, with the student simply following a script, the reality was different. The students, with effectively no English language at all, understandably found the idea of a telephone conversation with a faceless teacher terrifying. They rarely understood what was required of them, or which part of the script they should read, or even that there was a script.

Eamonn would answer the phone to the sound of a stranger hyperventilating. Random words — some English, some Spanish — would start coming at him like stray bullets. He would tell them to look at the script, would try to reassure them, but his English outpourings only made them panic more. Sometimes, against the rules, he attempted to speak to them in Spanish, but his Spanish was so poor that it either went entirely unnoticed or caused even greater confusion when they spoke Spanish back to him. The calls generally descended into both student and teacher throwing out words they did not themselves fully understand and which could not be understood by the other. Latterly Eamonn had adopted the approach of grimly ploughing on through the script regardless of the students’ utter incomprehension and mounting anxiety. It was a gruelling and baffling ordeal, a kind of anti-communication, and the perfect inoculation against any desire to learn a foreign language.

Within each call, though, there was a small epiphany. No matter how rocky the crossing, how fraught the previous nine minutes had been, there was always a brief moment of connection at the very end. Eamonn would say ‘Goodbye’ several times until the student heard and recognized it. The student seized upon the word like someone adrift at sea for weeks — both because they had finally understood something and that what they had understood was that their ordeal was almost at an end. There was always a second of stunned silence and then a flurry of reciprocal goodbyes. Despite himself, Eamonn found something moving in the moment, the pure thrill of communication against the odds; he felt much as he thought Alexander Graham Bell must have felt as he made his first ever phone call. In his current emotionally raw state, though, Eamonn wasn’t sure he could withstand that instant of redemption and hope without bursting into tears.

As it was, the calls with the Advanced students were bad enough. It was the responsibility of the tutor to keep the conversation going for twenty minutes. Often it wasn’t a problem, the students loved practising the language and were happy to chat about whatever came into their minds, but Eamonn was aware that he was failing to return the conversational ball.

‘So … José María … what have you been doing since we last spoke?’

‘Well, actually, it has been a very interesting time. My wife and I went on a fascinating holiday.’

‘Oh, good. Good. That sounds nice. I’m glad you did that.’

Long pause.

‘Would you like to know where we went?’

‘Oh. OK, yes — that would be great.’

He saved Encarna till last. He found something quite intimidating about her. It wasn’t just that her English appeared to be the equal of, if not superior to, his own. It was more that she seemed to be humouring him, as if she were the one being paid to make small talk. He found this impression confusing and unnerving.

‘Hello, Eamonn, it is Encarna.’

‘Hello, Encarna. How are you?’

The sound of smoke being exhaled.

‘So-so.’

‘OK. Good. So how did you find Unit 18?’

‘You want my honest opinion?’

Eamonn could think of little he wanted less. ‘Of course.’

‘I thought it was ridiculous.’

‘Oh. I’m sorry to hear that.’

‘Why must we read such stupid articles? Always a silly thing from the newspapers. A funny story. I don’t even think this one was true. This woman from Korea, who ends up in Torquay rather than Turkey? Please — it’s preposterous.’

There was a pause.

‘Yes. You’re right. It’s bollocks.’

He heard Encarna laugh for the first time. ‘Bollocks. That’s the right word for it.’

‘Encarna, why are you doing this course?’

‘I thought it might be interesting.’

‘And has it been?’

‘Not really. Not until now.’

‘Why now?’

‘Because now we are really communicating. We are finding out things we want to know. We are not talking about the weather in Scotland, or Christmas shopping on Oxford Street, or … what was it? … morris dancers.’

‘Those fucking morris dancers.’

She laughed again. ‘Exactly.’

‘You have a nice laugh.’

‘Thank you.’

‘I wish I heard it more often.’ Eamonn felt slightly out of control, as if he were reading a script someone else had written.

‘Really?’

‘We should do this more often. A proper conversation. Maybe I could visit you?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Maybe we could meet up sometime? I could come up to Asturias. You could show me the grass and the cider.’

‘Erm … we’re a long way from each other.’

‘You sound sultry. I don’t think I’ve ever told you that. It’s probably the fags.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘You’re right, too far. Anyway, what’s so fucking special about grass and cider? Jesus, I could go to Hereford for that. Fucking morris men!’

‘Eamonn, are you OK?’

‘I’m just saying, it’d be nice to do this more often. To talk. On the phone. Have you ever had phone sex?’

‘Eamonn! I think this isn’t a good day for you.’

‘No, no it’s not, you’re right, but when is? Can’t sit around waiting for a good day to come along, can we? Never get anything done.’ There was silence at the other end of the line. ‘I was joking about the phone sex. I don’t even understand what it is.’

‘Please stop talking about it!’

‘I’m not talking about it. I’m just saying it was a joke.’

‘I won’t have phone sex with you!’

‘Well, you keep mentioning it —’

The line went dead. He was still staring at the image of the red telephone receiver when a new call came through on his headphones. The screen showed the caller identity as Francesca, his manager at Lenguanet.

‘Hello, Francesca, I’ve been meaning to call you.’

‘Hello, Eamonn.’

‘You might have seen I’d let a little backlog build up, but I’m getting back on top of things now …’

‘Yes, I saw you had a few phone tutorials scheduled for today …’

‘Yeah. Sorry about the last couple of weeks. I’ve had a few problems, but …’

‘… And as you know we randomly monitor the quality of the service our tutors provide.’

‘…’

‘So I thought today would be a good day to do that.’

Eamonn was quiet for a while. ‘I would describe today as atypical.’

Silence.

‘I was joking about the phone sex.’

More silence.

‘I’m fired.’

‘Correct.’

He closed the laptop. Walked to his bedroom, climbed into his bed and curled into a tight ball. He awoke hours later to sounds of hammering and the smell of fish fingers.