Life

by Gwyneth Jones

  This was still not fully explained, even by the experts.

  She looked up. Feathery white cloud skimmed the blue dome of the sky. She was held suspended, in a silent cool concavity of earth and air. Dr Russell, Anna’s favorite lecturer, was big on context. She derided the very concept of isolation. No allele is an island! To Anna this was like a moral reproach. She had not set out to be alone. But if you didn’t want to play the sexual-panic games, there wasn’t much left of undergraduate social life. It was like sitting there being tee-total while everybody got drunk: and so she was retreating, day by day, week by week.

  Arranged marriage would have suited Anna: no impossible ideals, just a matter-of-fact agreement. It would be no problem if you met for the first time on your wedding day. As long as the person was a decent human being and the sex worked, you’d be happy. And why wouldn’t it work, if the two people were young, fancy free, and entered the pact with goodwill? It worked for me, she thought, remembering how very excellent it had been, cleaving only to Spence. Whose body did not fascinate her, who had no allure that could drag her from room to room: with whom she had shared a common, human sweetness that any two people might have. But that had been a controlled experiment. In vivo, as far as she knew anything about it, arranged marriage had a success rate no better than love affairs. Worse, in the big numbers: especially for women.

  It would have gone sour. This way, their few weeks were safe forever.

  …yet still I think of him with kindness,

  and shall do ’til our last goodnight.

  She couldn’t remember the name of the poem or the poet, but the couplet spoke to her feelings: enduring tenderness. If I never get another turn at it in my whole life, she thought, I bet I’ve had more than my share of really good sex, compared with lots of people. Thank you Spence. I won’t forget. She made a note to herself, as she headed back, that she must not let this trip develop into a yearly pilgrimage. She knew she had a tendency to get obsessive about things.

  ii

  Charles Craft was a tall young man with sleepy eyes, a puffy pink and white complexion, and a permanent stipple of black around his lips and jaw. His hair was a fine dark thatch that stood up in tufts on the crown of his head, like the hair of some newborn babies; he had large, soft hands and large, soft thighs that strained the fabric of his habitual, very clean and pale blue jeans. He had a girlfriend called Ilse, who was one of the Biology masses, but Anna didn’t know her except by sight. She did not socialize with Charles, though they were de facto associates at the top of the class. She was not surprised when she discovered, in the Autumn term of final year, that they were to be project partners: but she was disheartened. Charles spoiled things. He was a pain in seminars, sniping at her with pointless little challenges.

  Guy Doone, the redheaded post-doc who would be their supervisor, showed Anna and Charles around the big warm room that had the atmosphere of a catering kitchen, but less coherence. Benches and counters were divided into separate untidy territories, where domestic-looking machinery jigged and stirred, and trays of cells lay about, like leftover food in the back of the fridge. Mess, thought Anna. Noise. I must be getting closer to the reality. She was intensely excited at the prospect of committing real science.

  “And this is our pride and joy,” said Guy, standing before what appeared to be a top-loading washer-dryer. “The new PCR machine. Not the cutting edge, but it’s the nearest we’ve got—and one of the few pieces of big equipment we own that you couldn’t buy from a consumer durables discount store. Fridges, microwaves, mixers: as you’ll soon find out, we’re just glorified housewives in here…er no offence, Anna.”

  “We had that model at my Dad’s lab, years ago,” Charles examined the machine disdainfully. “I’ll take the back off it if you like, see if I can give it a reboot. I can’t boil an egg. But if you do the housewife thing, Guy, I can take care of the science.”

  Guy blushed, a red-head’s violent crimson. “As you should know,” he said stiffly, “the crucial factor in polymerase chain reaction, the development that turned genetic engineering from a handicraft into an industry, is precise temperature control. The machines are bloody expensive because they can shift the temperature inside practically instantly. They’re very delicate, as your Dad may have told you, Charles. Please don’t take the back off anything in here, ever.”

  Charles sighed and stared blatantly out of the window.

  Anna would have liked to kick him. The chances that Guy the post-doc wanted to be lumbered with two third-years were remote. If Anna and Charles gave him grief, his interest in them was going to be less than zero. Charles caught her eye. “I wasn’t going to let him get away with that,” he whispered. “We’re not here to wash dishes.”

  There was nothing she could say. The problem was too trivial.

  As they left the lab at the end of the morning they met Seraphina Russell. The big woman, white coat crisp in spite of the heat, beamed on them with spaniel-brown eyes, startlingly warm and emotional in her large, stern face. “Well, Anna,” she said. “Welcome home, my dear.” She said this because Anna had pestered incessantly for real work since the first term of first year. “Charles too,” she added kindly. “Enjoy yourselves, and don’t expect too much.”

  Ilse was waiting downstairs by the porter’s cubbyhole, hugging an armful of books and folders to her pink-sweatered front. Girls like Ilse made Anna uneasy. Had she not met Daz at the Freshers’ Fair, had she not met Rosy and Wol and Spence and Simon, had she never met Ramone Holyrod, Anna might have herded with the Biols masses. She might have looked like that: the crop-hair and pastel ensemble that was like a uniform.

  “Coming with us for lunch?” offered Charles, with a magnanimous air.

  Ilse smiled.

  “Er…no thanks.” She wished she had an excuse to dress the refusal.

  Charles looked like he thought as much. As he turned away he muttered distinctly, “teacher’s pet!” He was right, damn it. Dr Russell made no secret of the special feeling she had for Anna. Oh, God. She didn’t want to be teacher’s pet. Nor did she want to be involved in Charles’s status-contests with their supervisor. But she couldn’t see how to avoid either. Oh, how infuriating.

  She had moved into a one-bedroom flat in a residence hall mainly occupied by postgrads. It was expensive, but it beat sharing the housework with five other people, four of them (especially Marnie) with indescribably filthy domestic habits. Living alone she could make debt-control her priority. It was like a return to her childhood; it made her happy, every frugal week, to keep within her limits. One day, when she’d cycled into town to do her shopping (excellent change from a food kitty that other people spent on impulse), she met Ramone Holyrod in the organic butcher’s. Anna had bought a bag of soup bones, for a minor sum, and was discussing some bacon bits, but they were too expensive. She said goodbye, turned and saw Ramone. The rabid one wasn’t living in any of the shared flats or houses known to they all. She had gone to earth, somewhere unknown. They left the shop together, Ramone having bought a free-range chicken.

  “I couldn’t have done that!” she announced, as they walked, Anna wheeling her bike.

  “Done what?”

  “You could at least have said bones for my dog.”

  This, from the girl who had introduced processed-pea sandwiches to the culinary scene. Anna noticed that the rabid one had grown milder, her teasing almost kindly. “I thought you told me your family was really poor?”

  “We were really poor. It wasn’t a leisure pursuit, like Channel 4 tells how to live gracefully on three lentils a week. It was humiliating, you don’t know what it was like.”

  “I think I do.” Anna’s own childhood was vivid to her just now. “Your parents always had the price of another pack of fags, fed you junk food, and never dreamed of paying up when the school sent those letters home asking for ‘voluntary contributions’ for bus fares to the swimming pool. We were the ones who went without, to subsidize their self-centered pig-ignoran
t Mclifestyle.”

  “Middle-class wanker.”

  “Ramone, I’m going down to the market now, to pick up some free vegetables, or as near to free as I can find. If I was prepared to beg, which I’m not, it’s a heavily managed professional activity, even in Bournemouth. I’d have to wait for a vacancy, grovel to the boss; and it would take up too much of my valuable time. With soup bones and bruised veg, I eat well and I control the debt mountain.”

  “You could go on the game.”

  “Bad as begging. Is that how you manage to afford free-range chicken?”

  Ramone’s appearance had changed dramatically. She wore black jeans that fit tightly over her skinny little legs, cowboy boots, and a vegetarian leather jacket. Her hair was gone. She sported a low-lying Mohican that divided her skull like a strip of crimson hearthrug and only a modest number of plain silver rings—one in each earlobe and another in her nose. She had a tika mark, crimson as her hair, on her forehead. Anna thought she looked like someone who had found herself.

  “It’s for a friend,” said Ramone, with dignity. “I’m coming with you. You can show me how to be middle-class about poverty. I’m interested in cultural deviance.”

  Anna bought cheap vegetables. They caught up a little and then parted. It was a rapprochement. Their tracking had fallen into abeyance in second year, when Ramone had lived with Rosey and Wol like a half-wild stray cat that will come home to eat and sleep but desires no social amenities. Maybe they had been missing each other. A few days later Anna was indulging in a thali in the Union basement. The Hindu Society ran a vegetarian buffet every Wednesday lunchtime, sometimes with music or dance. The food was cheap and very good, a luxury that came out of Anna’s bar and social allowance. She could afford this, because Anna Anaconda was seeing less and less of they all. Yet she was pleased when the rabid one walked in and came to join her.

  “What happened to the bone soup and rotten veg? I knew you were pissing around.”

  “I’m within my budget.”

  “It’s bullshit, anyway. Chocolate’s incredibly cheap, and it keeps you going. I learned that a long, long time ago.”

  Which explains your teeth, thought Anna. She guessed Ramone had followed Anna in here solely for the purpose of delivering this brilliant retort, and felt disappointed. But Ramone went away and came back with her own food: silently chowed down on lentils and yogurt and chapattis, emptying each small bowl mechanically. She ate all the whole spices and looked askance at the small heap of leaves, hard berries, and bits of twig that grew on the side of Anna’s tray.

  “Are you doing anything now?”

  “Not for an hour or so.”

  “Good. I’m taking you to meet someone. In fact,” she raised her voice. “I want you to meet the person I’m living with.”

  Aha, thought Anna. Now I’m going to meet the Hindu boyfriend. Or girlfriend.

  She was taken to Pinebourne House, the smaller of the two listed Georgian buildings in the middle of the valley. Anna was intrigued. Living in Pinebourne was classy. Debt-ridden undergraduates need not apply. There were signs of children: a pink tricycle overturned, a stripy ball. “That’s one thing I can’t stand about Piney,” grumbled Ramone. “Fucking kids. I don’t mind people being heterosexual, or married, but there ought to be a law against kids in places of learning. Like in the old days, when scholars had to be in Holy Orders and pretend to be celibate. One fat belly and you’re out.” She seemed nervous. At the door of a first-floor apartment she turned and glared, standing between Anna and her home as if defying an intruder. “Look, whatever you see and whatever happens, be cool, okay? You have to be calm, around her. Right?”

  “Around who?”

  “My tutor, Doctor Lavinia Kent. Last term, I finally realized I didn’t have to stand that sexist shit Ogden. Everyone knows he’s a bastard. If he fancies you, you have to fuck him; if he doesn’t your results are screwed anyway, it is common knowledge. I went to the Dean and got myself out of all his teaching, and he’s not my personal tutor anymore. Lavvy is. And she’s…she needed someone, so I’ve moved in with her.”

  “Oh?” Trust Ramone. Rejects tutor on the grounds of sexual harassment, and sets up love nest with the replacement.

  “Not what you think. I’m her home help. I’m a paramedic. She needs me.” Ramone’s eyes narrowed, wonderingly. “You don’t know anything about her, do you?”

  “Should I?”

  “I suppose a science nerd wouldn’t. She’s famous, in the real world. She teaches Philosophy, and she’s schizophrenic, so you have to keep things down, know what I mean. Flatten your emotional register.”

  “Okay.”

  “Right. Wait there.”

  Anna waited at the open door, assuming she’d been given one of Ramone’s highly-colored confidences: anything but the truth. Soon a woman came smiling to greet her—a small woman, though not as small as Ramone, girlishly slender and erect, her iron-grey hair drawn back in a long, thick pony-tail. She was wearing a camel wool dressing gown. The pale skin of her face was so delicate you could have taken her for a grey-haired teenager. Her large, light blue eyes had a distracted carefulness.

  “Hallo Anna, which means Grace: and I can see you are graceful. Ramone has told me so much about you. Come in. But please, when you cross the threshold, would you bow, and touch the red handprint that you see on the wall.”

  Anna did as she was told. The slim woman kept a hand fixed on Anna’s wrist and talked her through a series of bows and gestures, avoidances and reverences, as they negotiated the front hall and crossed a large room hung with mobiles and strewn with strange sculptures made of beach debris, dead branches, empty plastic bottles. Anna did not attempt to meet Ramone’s eye. If this performance turned out to be a hoax, or some kind of New Age idiocy, she didn’t have to come back.

  “Excuse me,” said Lavinia Kent at last, when they had reached the safe harbor of a rattan couch and chairs set around a beautiful sea-green and blue rug, “I can’t explain how all of that helps, but believe me it does. My rituals stave off the times when I have to resort to heavy medication.” She smiled, with the proud politeness of someone apologizing for their wheelchair. On the wall opposite her Anna saw the remains of a chalk-drawn mandala, an intricate pattern of red and black and white that had been furiously smeared out of shape. The strokes that broke the pattern looked fresh. There was red and black chalk on Anna’s wrist and on Lavinia’s palms. So slight a violence: but the hairs on Anna’s nape prickled.

  “If this is a bad time… I really don’t have to stay—”

  “Oh no, don’t think of leaving. I mustn’t let my naughty child have its own way too much. It would only want more and more attention.”

  Ramone hovered, combining the pride of possession with a warning glower.

  “Lavvy’s an animist.”

  “Sheer pragmatism,” said Lavinia. “I treat my illness like a mischievous spirit, an elemental child. I obey its demands, as good parents should obey their children, as often as possible, and lay down the law when I must. If I need them, I have no hesitation in taking the drugs, which are much less sledgehammerish nowadays, thank God.” She tucked up her feet on the couch. Anna saw that her petal cheeks were meshed in fine lines—giving the impression, with the distracted caution in her eyes, that her face might shatter at any moment. “Don’t be confused: the tricks I use to manage my disease are separate from the animism I discuss in my work. It’s the misfortune of philosophy that your ideas, the big ideas that you want to develop, are bound to rise out of your personal experience. I expect Newton had some personal, maybe distressing or shameful reason, for favoring the notion of gravity. No one seems to dismiss his theory on that account.”

  The shelves of a tall bookcase against the mandala wall held rows of books by L. J. Kent. Did she have students? Did she teach, in a lecture hall garlanded with fetishes? The philosopher seemed to be wearing nothing under her dressing gown. She looked like a hermit: a desert mother plagued by demons. Ann
a was afraid that if she didn’t give the right responses there’d be some awful explosion, but she had no idea what to say. She felt like strangling Ramone.

  “Ramone has told me that you are a brilliant biologist, the only student in your year doing original research as an undergraduate. That’s remarkable.”

  Oh right, Ramone. Flatten that emotional register.

  “The project’s new to me,” said Anna. “Because anything would be. It’s not original. They let third years work on repeating things that have often been done before: checking footnotes. I’m not working alone, either. I have a partner.”

  “Male or female?”

  “Er, male.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Charles.”

  “Meaning, the manly. Is he very manly?”

  “I’ll go and make your juice,” said Ramone, “I bet you forgot to eat.” She disappeared into the kitchen, looking daggers at Anna as she went.

  “I don’t know him socially,” said Anna. “Only in the lab.”

  “Do you like him?” asked Lavinia, leaning forward. Her soft, elderly breasts became freely visible.

  “I’m afraid I don’t, much.”

  “I thought not. Do you find it difficult to work with someone you dislike?”

  Anna opened her mouth and shut it. Juice-maker grinding noises saved her for a moment. “It’s not serious. It’s probably my own fault: penis envy or something—”

  Lavinia smiled. Ramone, returning from the kitchen, caught Anna’s last words and pounced on them. “Penis envy doesn’t exist. Freud invented it because breast envy is such a major deal he couldn’t believe women didn’t suffer something complementary. Men cannot control the way they react to a pair of big jugs. You must have noticed.” She offered the tray to her tutor with humble care and resumed, without drawing breath. “It’s a minority of sophisticates that graduate from tit to cunt. You don’t envy his prick. But he really, really wants your knockers. Watch he doesn’t cut them off.”