Work Text:
Educating Frank
Dr. Frank Bryant sat in his chair looking out as the waves slapped at the narrow band of sand yards from his feet. The water in Beagle Gulf was blue, but it was an entirely different blue than the Australian sky that sat atop it. He took another sip of his iced tea and contemplated his situation, including the drinking of iced tea.
"Frank old chap, if this is exile I highly recommend it to everyone at least once in their life" he said out loud. Technically he was on sabbatical from his university job as a literature professor; the fact that he had it forced upon him due to an overfondness of alcohol both on and off campus was not lost on him. It had been a rough four weeks starting with the interminable trip from Liverpool to Darwin via what seemed like every city in between - it had been as good a time to give up drinking as any he could think of. After a month things became a little easier, and without the familiar surroundings of his former home a fresh start was made almost a necessity.
Now, he was a guest lecturer at the Darwin Community College for a two year term to "reconsider" his behavior and teaching ambitions. Frank may have been an alcoholic, but he was no fool - what it meant was that he was being shelved out of sight from the university so as not to embarrass them any further with such student-like activity as shouting at the bursar from the grounds at 3am or falling off the lectern drunk while speaking. If he were to drink himself to death while away, no doubt the university would publicly lament his passing and privately cheer the event. In the meantime, the college was encouraging him as a valued addition to their staff as they struggled to gain prestige on a national level instead of just being "that little school up north". There was even talk of changing the school's name shortly, but that was of little consequence save changing a line on his Curriculum Vitae.
A new writer needs few things to begin working at their craft; for one who had written in the past before giving it up, he needed even fewer. He had a job that wasn't too taxing, no distractions from a wife who had left him or girlfriend who had left him or friends he never had, and now for the first time in ages he had something that he'd misplaced for many years - the desire to write. He had already scratched out a few poems, but as was his method he had placed them aside to go over again later with fresh eyes. He closed his eyes to think only to be interrupted by the shout of his name in the distance.
"Sod it" he grumbled before yelling out to establish his location at the cost of his anonymity and peace.
A young man in decidedly casual attire approached and stopped a respectful distance away. "Excuse the interruption Professor, but you have a call."
"Thank the caller for their interest, and I will be available when the sun gets to about...there" Frank said, pointing at a location in the sky.
"The lady on the other end said it was personal."
"Personal? Well, I suppose since they went to the trouble of making it personal" he said as he pulled himself out of the chair "then I should roust myself enough to answer it. Mind you, had it been impersonal then we'd be having an entirely different conversation." Frank walked up the short flight of steps to the building nearest the water, where he went inside and picked up the telephone. "Just how personal is this going to get?" he asked the caller.
"No bank account information if that's what you're asking" a woman's voice answered on the other end after a pause. Even the connection couldn't hide the Liverpudlian accent of the woman.
"Rita!" Frank exclaimed, recognizing the voice. "I thought I told you never to call me here."
Another pause. "You never said that. You never even gave me your bleedin' number - I had to threaten a few people just to track you down."
"Rita, what could be of such importance that you'd threaten the emotional well-being of complete strangers just to talk to me?"
After another infernal pause, she replied "You left in such a hurry we didn't get a chance to talk. I wanted to ask you a few questions."
"And here I am asking all of them instead of you" Frank stated. He started to ask another question but switched to "Ask away."
"First question - are you sober at the moment? It might affect the answer I get, you know."
"The fluidity might change, but the feeble spark of wisdom I might theoretically have is unaffected. But for your peace of mind, I haven't had a drink in a month now and you can tell the distilleries they have to diversify if they want to remain fiscally afloat."
"Good. I'd like to know: Do you think I'm smarter now than I was when I first came to you?"
Now it was Frank's turn to pause, but mindful of the silence he hummed before answering. "No. I think you're just as smart; what sets you apart from the creature that darkened my door on that fateful first day of open campus was that you express yourself more easily now. You had an undeserved inferiority complex, but now you've gained confidence to state what you believe AND be able to back it up with citations. Now take some more advice from me - you don't need to be spending a month's rent calling me just so I can provide you the support of which you are no longer in need. You have all the tools you need to achieve great things, Rita. Goodbye, and I wish you all the luck in the world which is substantially more than you require." He hung up the phone
"A former student back home" he explained to the young man who had stood nearby. "One of the better ones, actually. Well, I've still got a few hours before I'm needed so I'll be back to whatever it was I was doing." He ambled back down the steps and had just bent over to sit back in the chair when there was another shout; this time, the young man didn't bother traversing the narrow swath of sand to announce there was another phone call. He heaved himself back up and returned to the building where the young man - Harold - was hovering. "A very persistent former student" Frank explained, but there was the slightest smile on his face.
"Yes?" he asked as he spoke into the receiver.
"You didn't let me finish" Rita fired back.
"I have come to the conclusion that there never is a finish to a conversation - even after both participants haven't spoken in years; their voices resonate in their souls like a fading but never silent echo. Yours is particularly loud at the moment. What is your next question?"
"I looked up Mary Shelley so I know all about her Frankenstein character. You think I'm a monster do you?"
"A monster - no. But what I meant is that you were so wonderfully you when you came to me, and thanks to my instruction you...changed...into someone that was more college student than you. I perverted the very essence that made you so unique; so much that it drove me to drink and the thought of taking a beautiful statue and turning it into a lump of clay like every other lump of clay."
"As me memory serves regarding the drinking, you had already driven there when I met you."
"Point well taken. But instead of drowning my sorrows for loves past, I was now doing it for crimes of mine that were quite of the present. The intensity due to the immediacy of events just required larger doses is all, or perhaps the accumulation of many smaller doses depending on how you look at it."
"Then why aren't ya dosin' now? Not that I'm complaining, mind you."
"Rita White, or Susan if you prefer. I would love to have a long, intense discussion of the matter but I absolutely refuse to have you pawn what meager possessions you might have to afford these expensive calls. You've found me and I'm doing remarkably well. Write me at length and I promise I shall reply in haste to all your questions and in all truth probably exceed any limitations placed on postal envelopes with the volume of my replies. Good day, and please write." He hung up the phone and turned to Harold. "I am not receiving any more phone calls for the next two hours." With determined gait he marched back to his chair and reclined once again. After a few minutes with no followup call he relaxed and closed his eyes.
Rita was quite remarkable. A Liverpool hairdresser, she had signed up for literature tutoring at Open University in order to better herself. Outwardly brash, she was intellectually timid and not stupid as she would claim in a self-deprecating manner. But through the year she had developed into quite a critical thinker, and had gained enough confidence to study and eventually pass her entrance exams with distinction. Her, and the forced sabbatical, had both been instrumental in rekindling Frank's creative spark. Speaking of that spark, he settled his mind to start construction of something about the joy of teaching. He was working on a perfect rhyme for 'institute' when he heard the crunch of footsteps approaching.
"Harold, no phone calls yet. I shall be available at the appropriate time."
"Then tell bloody Harold when he shows up; in the meantime I've got you to me self" a voice said behind him as the footsteps came around the side. He opened his eyes and Rita stood before him.
"Airplanes are getting faster" he mused out loud.
Rita held up an imaginary telephone to her head and paused before speaking. "What was that? This connection isn't the best." She dropped the phone and smiled. "And don't start lecturing me on the cost of flyin' over here - what I WOULD have spent on calls I saved just by bein' here. So..." she said as she flopped into the sand in front of him "...the student learns at the feet of the master."
"The master of my fate and the captain of my soul perhaps, but I am no longer your teacher. You've grown beyond me, Rita. Be grateful for it."
"Ya know Frank, that humble crap sounds good on paper but it wears a little thin in person. I can still learn from ya, even if ya don't know it. Or care for that matter."
"Oh, I care Rita, I really do. Back there..." he said, nodding with his head in the general direction of England for emphasis "...I didn't, I admit that. Deep down maybe, but it was getting buried in layers of indifference like a gem dropped in the sediment at the mouth of the Nile."
"Good for ya. Now, I've got something to say me self and it's your turn to listen, so sit yourself down."
"I seem to be" Frank observed. He also observed that Rita tended to slip into her local dialect more when she was worked up and right now she was worked up. It was an observation only, not a criticism, and he ignored any impulse to correct her grammar.
"So you are. Now I already told you that you're a good teacher, and that doesn't matter whether it's back home or here. But a lot of people can teach - I taught girls how to do hair when I was working that job before I started working at Twenties." Twenties was a pub Rita had started working at when she started sharing a flat with a waitress named Trish who was already working there.
"And I'm sure you did an admirable job" Frank said, thinking about how Rita's hair style and color had changed just in the year since he had met her.
"I did fair enough, but I don't know that I have the patience to be a teacher all the time. But Frank, you have a rare gift - you can teach AND you can write. It's like my flatmate Trish told me when she tried to kill herself - 'When I hear music and poetry I can live...the rest of the time, it's just me. That's not enough' she said. You see Frank, you help people to live."
"Bullocks."
"No, it's true. I don't mean you give people a reason to live, but you say things for them that they can't; you help them see things their eyes couldn't. Take that manuscript that you tore up after I read it - it was good!"
"A child could do better" Frank retorted in critique; he had tried writing it while hung over.
"A gifted child maybe. The university review certainly was happy to accept it for publication."
Frank's jaw dropped slightly. He was sure it wasn't THAT good. "That rubbish?"
"That rubbish is a featured work next semester - one of the other professors might even cover it in class. You see Frank, what you dismiss as rubbish is treasure to us who can't write creatively. I can critique and give my opinion, but I can't...make the words dance." Rita stood up and took a drink from Frank's glass before she sat down again.
"Making sure I'm not drinking again?"
"No, you lout - I was bleedin' thirsty. Now where was I?"
"Dancing with words, I believe. But let's say for the sake of argument that I can write well - and I'm only conceding the point for the discussion. You didn't come all the way here to let me know I've been published again."
"Of course not. But you gave me something Frank - the freedom to choose. I didn't want to be a hairdresser the rest of me life, and taking your study got me out of where I was in. Don't be thinking that you yanked me out of where I was fitting in 'cause I wasn't. But you helped me get the nerve to do things because you made me believe I could, even if the ability was there all along. I don't have to go to university, but I COULD if I wanted. I don't have to be a hairdresser now, but I COULD if I wanted. I don't have to fly to Australia to talk to some old professor but I COULD if I wanted. 'Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go' I read somewhere."
"Eliot" Frank edified.
"Him, yeah."
"Okay Rita, so you have the ability to choose and have done so to fly here. You could have exercised the ability to choose simply by changing your lunch order or the color of your hair, although I have to say the darker shade of brown suits you. Why me?"
Rita stood up and crossed the gap until she was standing right in front of Frank's chair. She leaned down and looked at him point blank. "I like ya, Frank. You invited me to come here, but you had a plane to catch and I had some thinking to do. It kept coming back to me what me mum said when she was crying at that engagement party: 'There must be better songs to sing' she said. I knew what she meant - knocked up and married too early, she felt she didn't have any choices after she had to take care of us kids. I thought about it, and now I've chosen to sing a different song than the one I was singin' - and the new song is a duet...with...you" she emphasized by finishing off her point with a kiss. "Just because I've gained some independence by opening meself up to education doesn't mean I have to spend me life alone. Does that answer your question, or do I have to write an essay and hand it in to ya while you're sittin' on your arse?"
"Posterior - authors sit on their posterior. Readers sit on their arse" Frank said as he looked into her eyes. "Do I have to call you Susan?"
"God no! Let me be Susan to the rest of the bleedin' world - if you want to call me Rita I don't mind at all. I just made it up when I first came to ya because it sounded classy, but it was just pretentious crap. But with you I kinda got used to it - Susan sounds kinda funny comin' out of your gob anyway."
"Well, now I'VE learned something."
"Watch out - learnin' can become a habit" she said with a wink and initiated a followup kiss which was returned with enough enthusiasm to surprise BOTH of them.
The End