Acquired Tastes

by Simone Mondesir

  'So what's on the menu?' she breathed.

  'Gianni, the bill!' roared Fergus.

  Eight

  'The monstrous regimen indeed,' said Fergus holding up a candelabra which illuminated a row of portraits of determined-looking women, their lips pinched with disapproval and piety.

  The past principals and benefactors of St Ethelred's had believed in the virtues of hard work, thrift and Christian charity, and their expressions suggested that they considered immortality in oil to be an unnecessary frivolity.

  Vanessa and Fergus were standing on a dais at the end of St Ethelred's long, oak-panelled refectory, from which academics dining at High Table could look down at the serried ranks of undergraduates.

  The ceiling of the hall was vaulted like a church, with great oak beams soaring upwards, disappearing into the gloom. By candlelight, the refectory had an eerie magnificence, an effect accentuated by Fergus's vulpine features, which were made grotesque by the flickering light.

  Vanessa had followed his shadowy figure in a dreamlike journey through St Ethelred's moonlit grounds to a basement door, which had yielded to a kick and a curse. Fergus seemed to know his way through the dark, labyrinthine corridors even though he was not a member of St Ethelred's, which clung to its women-only status.

  Fergus placed the candelabra on the polished surface of High Table and pulled out the half bottle of brandy he had insisted Gianni sold them before they left the restaurant.

  'To fantasy and fornication,' he said, raising the bottle in a defiant toast to the row of disapproving portraits. Growing up in a run-down but respectable part of Edinburgh which had aspirations to be in Morningside, but was forever doomed to tight-lipped disappointment, the women in the portraits represented everything he had learned to hate. He had never been able to understand the virtue in moderation and self-denial.

  He took a long drink and handed the bottle to Vanessa.

  She hesitated. She was beginning to feel, if not quite drunk, at least very heady. She had a feeling the situation was slipping out of her control, an unfamiliar but not altogether unpleasant sensation. She tipped the bottle and drank deeply, her body tingling with anticipation.

  Fergus held out an academic gown he had taken from a collection hanging outside the door. College rules dictated that everyone wore a gown to dine at St Ethelred's, and a few hung outside the door for the use of visitors or the forgetful.

  'Put it on,' he commanded.

  Vanessa's nose wrinkled with disgust, the gown smelt fusty with the odour of many bodies. She held it between the tips of her fingers.

  Fergus laughed. 'The smell is part of the fantasy. It is the odour of sanctimony.'

  Vanessa gingerly put it on.

  Fergus wagged his finger and smiled lewdly. 'You've got to strip first.'

  Vanessa hesitated just for a moment, then stepped out of her mini-skirt and unbuttoned her silk blouse, letting it slip to the ground. She stood naked except for a black g-string and high-heeled black shoes, the candlelight suggesting contours where there were none on her lean body.

  She hooked one finger inside her g-string but Fergus motioned her to stop.

  'Leave it,' he said hoarsely and held out the academic gown.

  Vanessa turned round so he could slip it over her arms. As he did, he ran his hands fleetingly over her body; they felt rough and calloused. Vanessa shivered.

  Then Fergus tore off his clothes, hurling his jumper and trousers into the sepulchral gloom beyond the circle of light created by the candles. He almost tripped over in his haste to remove his underwear, hopping around on one leg to remove his grubby blue Y-fronts followed by his socks; one grey, one tartan and both full of holes.

  Fergus was powerfully built with a barrel chest and short sinewy legs. His chest was covered with thick, matted hair which curled across his shoulders and down to his buttocks. Vanessa stared, both repulsed and excited by his simian hairiness.

  Fergus handed her a mortar board which fitted neatly over her sleek hair.

  He stood in front of her grinning. 'And now for the first lesson.'

  Cupping his hands under her buttocks, he lifted Vanessa effortlessly on to the richly polished surface of High Table.

  Alicia absentmindedly ran a finger along the grain of her scrubbed pine kitchen table top. She was beginning to wonder where Vanessa and Fergus could be. The O Sole Mio closed at ten thirty and it was only fifteen minutes walk - twenty at the most - from the restaurant to her house. She yawned and replaced the top on her fountain pen. She was usually in bed by a quarter to eleven with a cup of cocoa, which she drank while listening to Book at Bedtime on Radio Four, but it was now nearly midnight. Alicia considered calling Fergus's rooms and then dismissed the idea. He had a dragon of a landlady who did not approve of women calling him, particularly at this time of night. Anyway, if they were there, it was because they were discussing Fergus's research, which was precisely what she had wanted them to do, and they would not thank her for interrupting them.

  Alicia allowed herself a little smile of satisfaction. Perhaps she had succeeded in bringing her two best friends together after all. Earlier that evening as she had watched Vanessa stalk across the green ignoring Fergus, her heart sank, wondering if she had done the right thing. Dinner at High Table had not helped either. She had rushed into the refectory just in time to hear four hundred voices murmuring 'Amen' at the end of Grace. Eight hundred curious eyes had watched her as she walked across the platform to High Table.

  Punctuality was deemed a virtue at St Ethelred's, and under the antiquated college rules, latecomers to meals could be asked to pay a forfeit like reciting a poem, although this was now usually invoked only on special occasions. However, as Alicia had been only too painfully aware, members of the academic staff were, as a point of honour, meant to set an example to students by never being late and she had not only been late, but also without her guests.

  The three empty chairs opposite the college principal, Dame Nora Pike, had loomed large as Alicia edged her way round High Table trying to avoid catching anyone's eye. The Principal was a tall, raw-boned woman with short iron-grey hair. Her tendency to peer over her half-moon rimless spectacles made her look absent-minded, but her sharp brain had served on many government committees. She had greeted Alicia with a benevolent smile.

  'Alicia dear, do come and sit down. Ought we to await your guests?'

  'I'm terribly sorry, Principal, I must apologise on behalf of my guests, but I'm afraid they are unable to dine with us tonight.'

  'Never mind, my dear, another time perhaps.' The Principal gave Alicia another kindly smile as though sensing her discomfort.

  'Not coming! How awfully disappointing. I was so looking forward to meeting your producer friend, and engaging her in a discussion about the moral responsibilities of the media. It's all very well to discuss these things in theory, but to have a practitioner here in our midst would have been so stimulating.'

  The speaker was the college bursar, Dr Joyce Niblett, who was sitting on the Principal's left. She was a tiny plump woman with a doll-like face accentuated by heavily rouged cheeks, and high, pencil-drawn, black arched eyebrows.

  'I'm sure Vanessa would have been delighted to discuss the media with you, Joyce. But I'm afraid she had some rather pressing business to attend to. You know what the media is like, there's always some last minute problem,' Alicia said, colouring slightly at the untruth.

  'I suppose she must lead a frightfully busy life,' Joyce's tiny hands fluttered like trapped birds as she spoke. 'But one should never be too busy to sit down and consider one's moral obligations, should one?'

  The Bursar was fond of telling how she had dedicated her life to St Ethelred's and 'her girls' as she termed the undergraduates. It was her way of fulfilling her role as a mother. A role denied her by the untimely demise of her fiancé Bertram, who had unfortunately strayed into the path of a number 11A bus just two days before their wedding. Although the event had happened over twenty-five years
before, its re-telling never failed to bring a tear to Joyce's eye.

  'Speaking of morals. Didn't I see your friend, Miss Swift, go off with Dr Archibald earlier? Was he part of her last minute problem?'

  It was Zelda Drake who was sitting on Alicia's right.

  Alicia's colour deepened.

  'They had some business to discuss, so I suggested they go somewhere quiet to eat,' she said defensively.

  'My dear Alicia,' Zelda laughed and slapped Alicia playfully on the arm. 'I wasn't suggesting anything immoral. I was merely referring to Dr Archibald's interesting little treatise. I gather he's having problems getting it published. I was only saying to Ernst the other day… ' At this point Professor Gruber peered round Zelda's elbow and gave Alicia a wan smile. '… that I should like to see a copy. I'm told it's causing quite a stir.'

  'Anything that challenges accepted ideas always does,' said Alicia loyally.

  'Oh, how I shudder when I hear those words,' Joyce intervened, her hands even more agitated than usual. 'They usually mean another step down the road to moral decline and degradation.'

  'And our friend, Dr Archibald, knows a thing or two about degradation,' Zelda said meaningfully. 'I am constantly surprised that you seem to enjoy his company, Alicia. I can't imagine what you two find in common.'

  'Oh, but …' Alicia began.

  Zelda put her hand on Alicia's arm. 'My dear, before you say anything more, I have to be honest with you and you know me, I really do believe honesty is the best policy. So as your friend, I simply have to tell you that my very brief conversation with Miss Swift left me with the very distinct impression that she isn't, how should I say this? She isn't quite one of us either.'

  'Oh, but …' Alicia had begun but once again got no further.

  'Are you sure you've been quite wise in suggesting they go off together? ' Zelda raised her eyebrows. 'I mean, do you know exactly what business they are discussing? The term “business” ', she made exaggerated quote marks in the air with her fingers, 'covers such a wide range of possibilities.' She sounded concerned, but her eyes were bright with malice.

  But Zelda was wrong about Fergus, they did have a lot in common thought Alicia as she put the papers she had been marking into a file. Why else would he come to her cottage so often for dinner? And he was a gentleman, in spite of all the rumours about him and his girl students. Zelda of all people should know it was wrong to listen to gossip.

  Looking back at her life, Alicia would be the first to concede that she had not had an awful lot of experience with men and that she had made a few mistakes, but that did not mean she was wrong about Fergus. She had not been wrong about Roger, she thought, it was just that at the time, they were far too young.

  They had both been second-year undergraduates when they met. Roger was tall and rather mournful looking. He wore old-fashioned and ill-fitting clothes which flapped around his thin body as he dashed everywhere, always late for something, dropping books and papers as he ran. His glasses were in constant danger of falling off the end of his nose, and they sometimes did, causing the other students much unkind merriment. It was this more than anything that led Alicia to take pity on him.

  She had taken to sharing a table in the library with him and then her lecture notes, and in their final year she shared the uncomfortably narrow bed in his digs. But while they managed to shyly lose their virginity to each other, the joys of sex had eluded them.

  Roger heroically blamed their failure on his inexperience, claiming it was a man's role to give pleasure, but Alicia had never been able to rid herself of the feeling that if she had been attractive enough, he would not have had any problems.

  It was a feeling confirmed by her next relationship. She met Marcello on her first foreign holiday in Italy, when she was twenty-four.

  After ten days viewing the cultural glories of Venice, Florence and Rome, against her better judgment Alicia had allowed the travel agent to talk her into a week's beach holiday in Sorrento. She spent the first two days sitting miserably on the beach with a towel draped around her shoulders and a T-shirt across her legs because the sun was so hot. By the time she met Marcello who was an assistant manager at her hotel on the third day, she had a very odd suntan, but he had reassured her that she was the perfect shape for a woman.

  Marcello seemed to imbue the word 'woman' with a dark eroticism that no Englishman could ever achieve. When he gazed into her eyes over a glass of Chianti, to the strains of a violinist wringing every last emotion from the chords of 'Santa Lucia', Alicia wanted to believe that Marcello was indeed the great love of her life, as he so passionately declared she was of his. And when he swore in the most heart-rending terms that he would die if he did not make love to her, Alicia thought she would be a murderer to refuse.

  That night, he had romantically climbed up to her first-floor room via the balcony in order to protect her honour, but Alicia's pleasure had been short-lived. Her previously gentle Romeo's rough onslaught on her body left her bruised, but unmoved.

  While he dressed, Marcello lectured Alicia on the superiority of Italian lovers, a subject he expounded on for longer than he had taken to make love to her - although love was hardly the word for what he had made. According to Marcello, frigidity, like homosexuality, was an English disease and in his experience - which was naturally enormous - like her, most English women had no passion and therefore could not come.

  Alicia could only nod wordlessly and bury her tearful and ashamed face in the pillow. She now had irrefutable proof of her failing as a lover and a woman, if proof she needed. The next morning, a chance enquiry of the other assistant manager at the hotel had revealed why Marcello had chosen the romantic route to her room, and added humiliation to her grief - Marcello had a wife and four children with one more bambino on the way.

  Alicia decided to avoid men after that, burying herself in her reading and her life at St Ethelred's.

  Then, nearly four years later, she met Donald. Donald was in the history faculty at Heartlands. He lectured in military history and made her laugh. He was also gentle and loved the theatre and cooking. They had so much in common that almost before Alicia realised it, he had become part of her life. A day did not pass without them meeting or if that wasn’t possible, talking for at least an hour on the telephone, exchanging gossip about fellow academics or discussing a new book or recipe. Donald gave Alicia the affection she craved, constantly hugging and kissing her and to her delight, he always put his arm through hers when they walked together. They giggled about other people's relationships and he was very sympathetic when she confided her past problems to him. He told her that it was just a question of meeting the right man, but Alicia was sure she had met him. All she had to do was be patient. But then she introduced Donald to Vanessa.

  She had known Donald for over a year before Vanessa's diary and a day trip to the theatre in London allowed them to meet.

  As lunch progressed, Donald and Vanessa seemed to get on very well. It turned out that they had some mutual acquaintances in the light entertainment department of the television company where Vanessa was then working. The colleagues in question had been at Cambridge with Donald and his undergraduate stories about them made Vanessa scream with laughter.

  But Alicia's delight that her best friend and the man with whom she was in love got on so well had not lasted long. When Donald left the table for a moment, Vanessa turned to Alicia with a triumphant look on her face.

  'He's a closet queen, I told you so all along.'

  Alicia felt as if she had been stabbed in the heart. 'No, he's not. He can't be,' she said faintly.

  Vanessa had dropped her napkin on to her plate with a finality that brooked no opposition. 'That man is a fag. I knew it the moment he walked through the door, and when he told me he was at Cambridge with Stuart and his crowd, well, no more need be said.'

  But Vanessa as usual had said it.

  'They were known as the Fen queens at Cambridge, and they still form a mutual admiration society in
Light Ent. None of them will admit to it, of course, and their closets are mink-lined these days, but everyone knows about them. God, you're such an innocent, Alicia, didn't you see all that eye contact between him and that little Italian waiter?'

  After Donald there had been nobody until Fergus.

  Alicia shook her head, trying to clear the memories away. It was so easy to dwell on bad things when you were tired, she thought, stifling another yawn. It would be so thrilling if Vanessa did decide to use Fergus's research. Perhaps she could suggest to Vanessa that she could be involved in the programme in some way. She had, after all, typed and annotated all Fergus's research, so knew it better than anyone else, even Fergus. It would be so exciting to work with the two people she cared about most in the world.

  She cut a large slice of fruit cake and boiled a kettle for tea. She knew she shouldn't be eating at this time of night because it kept her awake, but as she intended to wait up and hear Vanessa's news, it wouldn't really hurt.

  The shrill tone of the telephone almost made her choke. She had to swallow a scalding mouthful of tea before she could answer.

  It was Zelda, her voice high-pitched with excitement. 'Alicia, I'm dreadfully sorry to call you at this time of the night, I do hope I didn't wake you.'

  Without waiting for a reply, Zelda rushed on.

  'My dear, the most extraordinary thing is happening.' She divided the word extraordinary up into its many syllables. 'Joyce was doing her usual late-night round of the college… you know how she patrols around like some powder puff vigilante. Anyway, she heard some noises coming from the refectory. Well, she didn't know what to do, so she came banging on my door, squawking about thieves stealing the college silver. It took me ages to get any sense out of her, because she was quite hysterical. I was all for calling the local constabulary but she got even more hysterical, babbling on about scandal and the good name of the college.

  'So I decided that a little investigation was called for and telephoned Ernst, who bravely volunteered to come over. We decided not to barge in the door just in case it really was burglars, so instead, Ernst and I found a ladder in the basement and we managed to put it up against the outside wall without any help from Joyce, I might add. She just stood there wailing about death and destruction like some latter-day Cassandra.