by Vesna Main
–Oh, yes. Why?
–Why what? Why have I worked on her?
–No, why does she come to the group?
–Anna and Sarah have been distributing leaflets about their group in the city centre. They would like to expand and bring in more members from outside the university.
–Middle class guilt?
–That’s you again. I don’t believe in it. Those two don’t suffer from it, either. No, they are interested in campaigning on women’s issues. They don’t just want to read academic articles. They don’t want to discuss feminism without putting it into practice.
–Commendable, if a trifle patronizing.
–They want to campaign to help sex workers, against domestic violence, for equal pay and so on.
–And, this young prostitute, how old is she?
–Tanya’s nineteen.
–She comes to the group and then what?
–She’s the only one who comes as a result of the leaflets. And she doesn’t tell them what she does. They assume she’s a student.
–Typical. But why does she come? What’s in it for her?
–She hopes to get something out of it for herself. She lives with a boyfriend who pimps her and is violent.
–I think you told me that already. A bit of a cliché?
–Maybe. Very common though, much too common to leave it out of a story like this one.
–I see.
–I hope she’s not all cliché. I don’t think she’s your tart with a golden heart. She’s rough.
–I suppose most of them are. They don’t have a choice.
–Right. But she’s rough when it comes to her child too. She’s not sentimental.
–Oh, yes. You did say she had a child.
–A two-year-old girl who cries a lot and that irritates the boyfriend. So he hits Tanya for not being able to control the child. But then he hits her for everything. If she doesn’t bring in enough money, or simply if he’s angry, drunk or anything else. When Tanya gets the leaflet, she has the idea that talking to other women might help. She wants to ask them what to do.
–What about the women she works with?
–They tell her to leave him.
–Good advice.
–She doesn’t see it like that.
–So, what does she do?
–At first, she goes to a meeting in town but it’s been cancelled, or rather, moved to a different venue. When she checks where it is and realises it’s on campus, she is put off. That’s not a word she knows. It makes her think of camp sites.
–Is that plausible?
–Why not? I remember telling a woman on a bus once, in my student days, that I lived on campus and she thought that I lived in a caravan or in a tent.
–Okay. I wouldn’t know.
–When Tanya finds out that it’s the university, she’s terrified. She was trouble at school. Teachers hated her. She is not going ‘back to school’. But a week or so later she’s badly beaten and she remembers the leaflet said the group was for women only and for women who want to help each other. She goes there to meet other women and see what she can get from them.
–Why doesn’t she leave him?
–She doesn’t dare. He threatens to come after her. Besides, he persuades her that the flat was given to both of them and if she leaves, she won’t get another one from the council and how would she survive with a child on the street?
–Do the women help her?
–We see her walking across the campus square in front of the library, picking her way and cursing her high heels. She doesn’t have any other shoes. All her shoes are work shoes. Understandably, she’s nervous. She has spent a long time deciding what to wear. She’s conscious of her appearance; she looks different from everyone around her.
–Poor Tanya.
–When she arrives, most of the women are helpful and welcome her, but there is one who Tanya feels she ought to watch.
–Does she stay?
–Yes, but she feels completely out of it. They are reading an article by Gayatry Chakravorty Spivak.
–Good old Gayatry. I remember you reading that stuff when we first met.
–Do you? Thirty odd years ago?
–Yes. You used to give me passionate accounts of each piece. Didn’t you even meet her once at a conference?
–Yes, I did. I remember being struck by her whole demeanour and appearance: a sari and a short, punkish haircut. Haven’t thought about her for ages but I believe she’s still active. Still read by students.
–Oh yes. Not by anyone else, I’d think.
–That’s unfortunate because she is one of the few academics who has written and cared about ordinary women, one of those whose feminism wasn’t confined to academia. That’s why it’s appropriate she’s on the agenda when Tanya arrives.
–Much beyond her, I’d think. And I wouldn’t imagine many of your readers would be interested either.
–I don’t know. But Tanya certainly can’t make any sense out of what’s going on, either with the group or with the article. At the same time, she dares not leave—
–Do you really think so? A street walker? She’d be tough. Wouldn’t she be able to look after herself?
–I’d think that her toughness works in her milieu. Not among postgrads. With them, she’s tongue-tied, almost shy. A fish out of water.
–I see.
–They are sitting round a large table with coffee, tea and cakes in the middle. Even the cake is strange: carrot, not something she would have ever heard of. She spills coffee over the photocopy they give her and feels even more rotten: she remembers how clumsy she was at school. Eventually, the meeting ends as a seminar group knocks on the door; the women have overrun.
–I remember meeting you after those groups. You were always late.
–I’m never late.
–You were.
–I don’t think so. We had a flexible arrangement. That’s why we tended to meet in the journals room of the library so that the other could read while waiting.
–I never made you wait.
–You never gave me time to read the journals.
–Sorry. I thought you would have appreciated my eagerness to be with you.
–I did.
–And with this group, you have it all worked out? I mean, what will happen later?
–Not quite. I was thinking of an occasion where we had a woman coming to a session and it was so obvious that she didn’t belong. I’m not sure whether it was a question of class. But perhaps it was something else. Perhaps she was foreign; you could just tell from her body language that she felt uncomfortable. I was thinking of her while writing about Tanya.
–Using real life again—
–In this case, it’s transformed experience: the awkwardness of a foreigner becomes the awkwardness of a prostitute.
–Tanya never comes back, I assume.
–She rushes out as soon as the chance presents itself but Anna and Sarah catch up with her.
–Arh, those two. They won’t let her go.
–Right. She can’t believe how they manage to catch up with her but then, unlike them, she doesn’t know shortcuts through the building’s corridors and she is slow picking her way in her high heels. I imagine her being self-conscious as her shoes click on the hard floor – in fact, that’s the thing I remember about that woman, that foreign woman. It was all clickety-click and she seemed to be self-conscious of her every step and the noise it made.
–So, those two catch up with her.
–Yes, and they go on about how pleased they are that she came to the group.
–Two busy-bodies. They can’t be sincere.
–I think they are but Tanya doesn’t believe them. Anyway, she has decided she will never come back but she doesn’t tell them that. When the
y ask her which department she’s in, she says she would like to be a teacher – the words surprise her; she doesn’t know where they come from; she hated her teachers. The women think Tanya’s in education. Sarah even says something like oh, then you must know Jonathan, my flat mate, the young lecturer, and Tanya nods. They invite her to come with them to a Bergman film on Saturday night—
–Bergman? For a prostitute? That would sort her out.
–Don’t be facetious. They don’t know she isn’t a student.
–Most students wouldn’t watch Bergman.
–Well, Anna and Sarah do.
–Because you do.
–Okay. Tanya doesn’t go to see Bergman.
–Surprise, surprise.
–She tells them that she has something on. Even if she wanted to go with them, Saturday night is her busiest night. The women agree it’s too short notice and promise to tell her about the next meeting well in advance. Tanya breathes a sigh of relief as they part.
–I think I would too.
–I thought you liked Bergman.
–Some of it. But it’s those two. Imposing busy-bodies.
–They’re well meaning.
–They may be but they have no idea what life’s like for her.
–True.
–And if they did, they wouldn’t know what to do, how to help her.
–Maybe. But you can’t deny they are friendly.
–Overbearing more like it.
–I suppose that’s what it might feel like to Tanya. Anyway, she has to rush home because her neighbour, Mrs Bhatta, who’s been looking after her daughter, the two year old Lilla, has to leave for her afternoon shift at Cadbury’s.
–Right. They’re in Birmingham. At least it’s not Bristol.
–Don’t worry; I’m not pinching from our student days.
–Which reminds me, I was going to ask you: how did Anna and Richard meet? Hope it wasn’t at a Labour Party evening and then—
–No, they met at an outing in a restaurant, some birthday or other of a mutual friend and the second time when they talked properly and when, you could say, the relationship started was as they ran into each other outside the university library.
–No!
–Look, we can’t be the only couple who had a chat outside the library and started going out after that.
–You could think of so many other occasions, so many other venues.
–But this is just as good. It doesn’t reveal anything about us. I need the library; I don’t want them to meet in a pub.
–You mean they need to give the impression of being intellectual.
–They are intellectual.
–Intellectual people go to pubs.
–I don’t.
–Well, others do.
–Anna and Richard don’t. Meeting outside the library shouldn’t bother you. It should not be as important as Bob to you.
–What’s he called now?
–Still thinking.
–Carry on thinking.
–It’s difficult. Bob suits him perfectly. You know how important names are to novelists. They are part of the overall characterization. Bob communicates so perfectly his fumbling, clumsy self.
–Look, you can have the library conversation, you can even have them in Bristol, but you can’t have Bob.
–Don’t worry.
* * *
–Has Bob been rechristened?
–Rechristened?
–Well, my Bob was brought up Catholic. Once a Catholic . . .
–That’s brilliant. Fits in perfectly.
–What?
–Bob’s Catholicism and his reluctance to mention the word prostitute, his oppressive sexuality. Bob’s not malicious, he has the best of intentions, he wants to help Richard, Richard’s his most valuable member of staff and he can’t afford to lose him. But secretly he enjoys talking about sex and normally he would feel guilty but that is assuaged by the situation: now it’s his duty to talk about sex. Whenever the two of them meet – at first Richard insists that they meet on campus, in Bob’s—
–Look, that’s all well and good. But please put my mind at rest and give him another name.
–Bob’s only his working name. I’ll change it later.
–And the RAE and Richard’s academic record? The similarity to my position in the department is, of course, ‘entirely coincidental’.
–Of course. Every department has someone who is much better at research than the rest. You’re only one of many people in that position. Richard has to have an enviable academic record – important part of the story.
–Even that I can accept but Bob, no. He has to be renamed.
* * *
–Good day?
–Not bad. Yours?
–Same as usual.
–Good.
–Did you know there are middle-class women who operate from their homes?
–Prostitutes?
–Yes. That’s why I made Richard visit one in Chiswick.
–A bit too close.
–You think we might meet her.
–I can see you walking in the area and choosing a house for the chapter.
–No, I didn’t do that. She’s fictional, based on punters’ accounts. Don’t worry.
–I’m surprised why you chose an area near to us.
–No particular reason. All I needed was a middle class street with good property prices. She lives in a big house, alone, or that’s what Richard assumes when he notices one toothbrush and one dressing gown in the bathroom.
–There could be another bathroom, or two.
–Of course. She has a posh accent and he wonders whether she’s a widow or a divorcee, fallen on hard times. When he arrives, he finds the situation disconcerting—
–Why? I’d have thought he’s well used to—
–A different type of woman. Most of his are poor, working class, or oriental, immigrants.
–A break from his usual routine.
–Exactly. He has a way of speaking to those women but he can’t use that with this one. Most of the others come to him in hotel rooms or he goes to their flats, basement places with horrible wallpaper and stained carpets and after he has given them the money – cash, always cash, of course which, by the way, he tends to hand over in an envelope—
–Is this usual?
–I don’t think so. I can’t picture a punter putting cash in an envelope or worrying about it.
–You seem to have a clichéd image in mind.
–Do I?
–Didn’t you say punters come from all walks of life? If I were to—
–You would use an envelope?
–Yes, I would. Looks more decent, dignified.
–I see. In Richard’s case that’s only part of the reason.
–?
–It’s not only out of respect for the women but he also does it for himself—
–Meaning?
–He prefers not to have to look at the money. That way he can pretend that he’s having an affair.
–Poor sod.
–Apparently, that’s quite common, I mean, men trying to forget that money has changed hands. They often write how the woman liked them.
–I see.
–Anyway, once he hands over the cash – always the first thing, always at the beginning – he can get on with the small talk. Not with this Chiswick woman. She places the envelope on the mantelpiece and he is conscious of it being there, staring at him.
–Come on Richard, make an effort.
–Are you cheering for him?
–I feel sorry for him being so, so . . . pathetic.
–Dishonest and stupid, more likely.
–Stupid, yes.
–The woman calls herself Adele and dis
closes her real name as he’s to leave. I only give it to the gentlemen I can trust, she says. Next time, ask for Jennifer, Jen.
–Is there going to be next time?
–Richard doesn’t go twice to the same woman.
–Why?
–It’s never satisfactory. He thinks with someone else he might have that fulfilment, the ultimate experience.
–Poor chap.
–Idiot. Now, Adele’s different from his other women. Her house is in a tree-lined street and although not in good nick, it’s a large Georgian building on three floors with a basement, the kind of house Anna likes, he thinks.
–Would he be thinking of Anna at that point?
–He does.
–Wouldn’t a man at that point try to forget about his wife?
–Not necessarily. It’s compartmentalisation; the ability to separate the two lives. It doesn’t mean that he forgets that he’s married to Anna when he goes to see a sex worker. But he makes himself think the two lives are separate; one doesn’t impinge on the other. Anyway, he remembers that she’s an architect manqué—
–What a surprise. Why should she be an architect manqué?
–A bit of characterisation.
–But why take it from you?
–I’m not the only person who wanted to be an architect: Obama, for one.
–There could be something else about the house that makes him think of Anna, if that’s what you want. Flowers in the front garden. How about that?
–I don’t see why this bothers you? Part of me is given to Anna, not part of you.
–More and more those two are like us.
–They aren’t. I find the idea of architect manqué amusing. My private joke. It’s rather like when Hitchcock walks through a scene.
–People who know us will recognise it as you and they’ll assume the story is ours.
–People who know us will be able to see this is fiction.
–I doubt it. A question: does he tend to make arrangements with his women after disagreements with Anna?
–You mean so he could blame her later when it all comes out? It’s possible he uses that to justify his action to himself.
–It would make sense: he feels low when they have an argument and he rings prostitutes to make himself feel better.