The Wedding Without the Bride

In my country, weddings often start at eleven o'clock in the morning. The wedding is sometimes in a church, sometimes in a small hall. The bride wears a long white dress. The groom wears a dark suit. The guests wear nice clothes. After the ceremony, there is a big lunch with family and friends.

In the week after the wedding that did not happen, David did not go to work. He stayed in the flat. He sorted Anna's things into boxes — her books, her clothes, the small ceramic dish she had made in a class three years before. He did not throw anything away.

On Wednesday, Anna came to the flat. They sat at the kitchen table. They did not argue. They drank tea, and they decided how the next few weeks would work — who would move out, how they would tell people, what they would do with the small flat they had bought together. After two hours, Anna left. David made dinner. He ate it slowly. Then he sat on the sofa and watched the light change on the wall.

The graduation ceremony was at three o'clock on a Friday afternoon in late June. The hall was the small auditorium of the school where Mei had been a teacher for eleven years. There were seventy chairs for parents and guests, and at the front a small wooden table with the certificates in neat rows.

The head teacher was Mrs Adesina. She had been head for sixteen years, and this was the last graduation she would do before her retirement. There were eighteen students this year, including Mei's son Daniel, who was sitting in the second row at the front in a white shirt and his father's old tie.

Daniel's father, Mei's husband, had said he would come. He had said this on Tuesday, when Mei had asked him; on Wednesday, when she had asked him again; and on Thursday evening, when she had not asked him but he had said it anyway.

At three o'clock, the chair next to Mei was empty. At ten past three, when Mrs Adesina began to call the names, the chair was still empty. Mei looked at the printed programme in her lap. She had folded it once, and then folded it again, and the small black ink of Daniel's name was beginning to come away on her thumb.

Daniel went up when his name was called. He took his certificate. He looked, for half a second, at the empty chair beside his mother, and then at his mother. He smiled at her, in the slightly grown-up way he had developed in the last year, and went back to his seat. Mei smiled back. The certificate, she could see from where she sat, had Daniel's name on it in a careful blue script, and underneath it, in smaller letters, the words: With distinction.

The graduation ceremony was at three o'clock on a Friday afternoon in late June, in a year in which late June had decided, two days earlier, to behave like late August. The hall was the small auditorium of the school where Mei had been a teacher of mathematics for eleven years. There were seventy chairs for parents and guests, arranged in seven rows of ten, and at the front a small wooden table with the certificates in neat rows and a glass jug of water that nobody, on this hot afternoon, had thought to fill.

The head teacher was Mrs Adesina, who had been head for sixteen years and who had decided, the previous winter, in a conversation with her own grown children which she had not, in the eight months since, repeated to anyone, that this would be her last graduation. She was wearing the green blouse she always wore for graduations, although the blouse, like Mrs Adesina herself, had begun to look slightly less crisp than it once had.

There were eighteen students this year, including Mei's son Daniel, who was sitting in the second row at the front in a white shirt and his father's old tie. The tie was navy, with a small repeating pattern of yellow squares, and Daniel had borrowed it on the previous evening from the back of the wardrobe in his parents' bedroom, where it had hung, untouched, for eleven months — the length of time, more or less, since his father had stopped, for reasons that nobody in the family had yet found a single sentence to explain, coming home in the evenings.

Daniel's father had said, on the previous Tuesday, that he would come. He had said this on Tuesday, when Mei had asked him; on Wednesday, when she had asked him again; and on Thursday evening, when she had not asked him but he had said it anyway.

At three o'clock, the chair next to Mei was empty. At ten past three, when Mrs Adesina began to call the names, the chair was still empty. Mei looked at the printed programme in her lap. She had folded it once, and then folded it again, and the small black ink of Daniel's name was beginning to come away on her thumb. The realisation that the chair was going to remain empty did not arrive in any single moment; it arrived slowly, over the first six names that Mrs Adesina called, with the strange quality of being something Mei had known, in some way, for some time, but had not quite allowed herself to know.

When his name was called, Daniel went up. He took his certificate. He looked, for half a second, at the empty chair beside his mother, and then at his mother. He smiled at her, in the slightly grown-up way he had developed in the last year, and went back to his seat. Mei smiled back. The certificate, she could see from where she sat, had Daniel's name on it in a careful blue script, and underneath, in smaller letters, the words: With distinction.

After the ceremony, Mei and Daniel walked home together through the warm afternoon. They stopped, on the way, at the small juice stand at the corner of their street, where the man who had been running the stand for fifteen years poured them, without asking, two glasses of cold mango juice, and waved them off with one hand.

The Defence That Did Not Take Place

The thesis defence was scheduled for two o'clock on a Wednesday afternoon in the small wood-panelled examination room on the fourth floor of the philosophy department of the university. The committee — three professors from the department, a chair from another department whose presence was procedurally required, and an external examiner who had travelled in from a university in another country at her own expense and on her own time — had assembled at a quarter to two, in the way of academic committees that, despite their members' general impatience with formality in other contexts, observe certain forms with a careful diligence the rest of their lives do not, on the whole, contain.

The candidate was a woman called Beatriz. She was thirty-two years old. She had been writing a thesis on the philosophy of early childhood for six years and had, in the last eighteen months, been visibly closer to finishing than her previous communications had suggested.

At two o'clock, Beatriz had not arrived.

The chair, a man in his sixties whose own son had failed to defend a thesis seven years earlier and who had, since that morning, been unable to attend any defence without a particular tightness in his chest, opened the proceedings briefly to confirm that they would wait. The external examiner, who had a flight at six and had built her day around this two o'clock, exchanged a brief glance with one of the internal members. The other internal member, who had been Beatriz's primary supervisor for five years and who knew, with a particular kind of certainty that she would later recognise as having been available to her since approximately Tuesday, that something was wrong, said nothing.

At twenty past two, the supervisor checked her phone. There was a message from Beatriz, sent at half past one. It said: I am sorry. I cannot come today. I am not ill. I do not know when I will be ready. Please thank the committee for me. Please tell them I am grateful for everything.

The supervisor read the message twice. She looked up at the chair. She did not say what was in it. She said, simply: 'She is not coming. She has asked us to thank you.'

The room sat for a long moment. The wood-panelled walls, which had been the same wood-panelled walls for ninety years, were as quiet as wood-panelled walls usually are.

The external examiner, a woman of about fifty who had defended her own thesis in 1998 and who had, in the years since, sat on perhaps two hundred committees and seen most of the things that could go wrong with one of them, said: 'I have travelled a long way. I would like to use the time. May I ask the supervisor about the work? Not as an examination, but as a conversation. The candidate has produced something. I would like to hear about it.'

The chair looked at the supervisor. The supervisor nodded. The internal members nodded. The external examiner took out a notebook.

For the next ninety minutes, the four examiners and the supervisor sat in the wood-panelled room and talked about Beatriz's thesis. They asked the questions they would have asked her. The supervisor answered as best she could. They did not award the degree. They could not. But they treated the work seriously, as if it had been defended, and they wrote, before they left, a note to the candidate that the chair sent the same evening.

The note said, in part: We met at the appointed time. We discussed your work. We will be ready to meet again when you are. We were not, today, disappointed.

In the years that followed, Beatriz did defend her thesis. The chair was no longer at the university — he had retired in the year following the defence-that-did-not-happen, partly for the reasons he had not, until then, fully named. The external examiner came back, on her own time, to be present. Beatriz mentioned, at the dinner afterwards, that she had carried the chair's note in her bag for three years.

The Defence That Did Not Take Place

A note before the story. There is, in academic life, a particular kind of catastrophe that is, in literary terms, almost a sub-genre of its own — the thesis defence, the lecture, the public examination, the symposium that does not, for one reason or another, proceed as planned. The convention has its own conventions: the assembled committee, the empty chair, the slow recognition, the senior figure who knows what to do. I am writing the story anyway, on the grounds that the situation continues to occur and that an honest contemporary version is worth attempting. I would only ask the reader to keep both the story and the convention in mind.

The thesis defence was scheduled for two o'clock on a Wednesday afternoon in the small wood-panelled examination room on the fourth floor of the philosophy department. The committee — three professors from the department, a chair from another department, an external examiner who had travelled in from a university in another country — had assembled at a quarter to two.

The candidate was a woman called Beatriz, thirty-two years old, who had been writing a thesis on the philosophy of early childhood for six years.

I would like to interrupt, here, briefly, to acknowledge that the candidate I have just named — a woman, an unfinished thesis, a six-year delay — is the kind of figure that contemporary academic fiction has, by now, learned to deploy almost too well. The exhausted graduate student, the late-thirties candidate carrying years of expectation, the body that does not, in the end, appear: the type is recognisable. I am using her anyway, on the grounds that she does, in life, exist, and that signalling the convention is more honest than concealing it.

At two o'clock, Beatriz had not arrived.

The chair, a man in his sixties whose own son had failed to defend a thesis seven years earlier, opened the proceedings briefly to confirm that they would wait. The external examiner exchanged a brief glance with one of the internal members. The supervisor, who had been Beatriz's primary supervisor for five years, said nothing.

At twenty past two, the supervisor checked her phone. There was a message from Beatriz, sent at half past one. It said: I am sorry. I cannot come today. I am not ill. I do not know when I will be ready.

The supervisor read it twice. She looked up at the chair. She did not say what was in it. She said: 'She is not coming.'

The room sat for a long moment.

The external examiner, a woman of about fifty who had defended her own thesis in 1998 and who had, in the years since, sat on perhaps two hundred committees, said: 'I have travelled a long way. May I ask the supervisor about the work?'

I would like to pause, here, before the supervisor answers, to make a second observation. The figure of the senior academic who turns the situation into something usable is, by now, a recognisable contemporary literary type. I am using her because the story needed someone to perform her function, and the type was, in honest assessment, the most efficient available figure for the job. I would only ask the reader to notice that she is a type.

For the next ninety minutes, the four examiners and the supervisor sat in the wood-panelled room and talked about Beatriz's thesis. They asked the questions they would have asked her. They did not award the degree. But they treated the work seriously, and they wrote, before they left, a note to the candidate that the chair sent the same evening.

The note said, in part: We met at the appointed time. We discussed your work. We will be ready to meet again when you are. We were not, today, disappointed.

I would like to make one further observation, since the story is now drawing to its close. The reader will have noticed that Beatriz has not appeared in any of these paragraphs. The decision to keep her at this distance is the writer's decision, not the morning's. It participates in the convention by which the absent figure of such stories is, almost always, the convenient figure whose interiority the writer is licensed not to imagine. I have made the decision because the story I wanted to tell was the room's response to her absence, but I would acknowledge that a story written from inside Beatriz's afternoon would have been a different and possibly better story.

In the years that followed, Beatriz did defend her thesis. The chair was no longer at the university. The external examiner came back, on her own time, to be present. Beatriz mentioned, at the dinner afterwards, that she had carried the chair's note in her bag for three years.

I would like the reader to leave her there.