They were good parents, Mum and Dad. They loved their kids, and they still quite liked one another, after a fashion. They were the kind of parents who made it difficult to believe in things like divorce and child abuse. They stuck to the script, and they played their parts with real conviction. They weren't ashamed to be conventional; in fact, they were proud of being ordinary, of having all the ordinary ambitions. They thought that if everybody in the world could think like them and live like them, everything would be okay: no hatred, no violence, no evil. All it took, they thought, was decency. They were decent about everything, including Sharon's hair. They expected a certain amount of adolescent rebellion. ‘It's only young blood,’ Dad would say. They'd expected it from me but they hadn't got it, and that really pleased them. ‘You've an old head on young shoulders,’ Dad told me, when I was packing to leave. ‘You'll go far.’ I was really pleased. ‘Make sure you eat properly’ was all Mum said, but I knew what she meant.
In spite of Mum's reassurances, I didn't get any less nervous during the first few days. If I hadn't been terrified enough already, my first meeting with my tutor would have done the job.
Dr Gray was over sixty, and not very well preserved. His hair was wispy, and he looked as if he had once been a much taller man who was now slowly crumpling and collapsing into a shortness he was unprepared to tolerate. He was nearly as thin as I, but his skin was so slack that he must once have been much fuller of face and figure. His office, which was on the third floor, right under the eaves of Wombwell House, was full of books and dust. Some people might have said it was full of character, too, but Mum would have said it was disgracefully scruffy. Unlike the offices on the lower floors, it had a carpet, and its thick red curtains were not in the conventional university style. The fireplace had never been bricked up, and the grate was still in it, although the room was centrally heated. Dr Gray didn't seem out of place as long as he was in his office, but he and his office taken together seemed to be not only out of place but out of time. What decade or century they really belonged to I couldn't tell, but I knew that it wasn't mine.
'Charet,’ he said, when I first told him my surname. ‘Is that French in origin?'
'I don't know,’ I said, and immediately felt that the answer was inadequate. ‘I don't have any French relatives. My father says that there was an inquisitor named Clement Charet in the sixteenth century, who burned witches in the south of France, but that he can't have been an ancestor of ours because he was a Dominican monk and wouldn't have been able to get married.'
'Quite so,’ he said. ‘It would not have been a matter for undue anxiety in any case, given that a propensity for witch-burning is highly unlikely to be hereditary. Long before the university received its royal charter it was a theological college, and probably produced its fair share of inquisitors, so we start even on that score. But I shouldn't mock—it's because the philosophy department was once affiliated to the theology department that it had sufficient prestige to be allotted Wombwell House when the family petered out and abandoned its estates to become a university campus. Wombwell is the family name of the Marquis of Membury, as you probably know. That little woodland behind the house is still known as the Marquis of Membury's Garden, after a nineteenth-century scion of the family who persisted in bringing back seeds from his various foreign tours, which he then flung about at random, to see which would germinate and which would not. The wood has several exotic trees found nowhere else in the northern hemisphere. Were you interviewed before being accepted?'
'No,’ I said, wishing that I had been. ‘I got a conditional offer on my A levels. Three Cs. I got three As.'
He sighed. ‘I wish we could interview all our applicants,’ he said. ‘So many of them apply to us in the mistaken belief that philosophy is all about learning to run one's life, or selecting some kind of mystical faith that might make one feel happy.'
My cheeks must have been burning. I felt that I was there under false pretences. I didn't say anything, because I didn't know what to say.
'No matter,’ he went on, sadly. ‘My job, as your tutor, is to monitor your academic progress, and to provide you with a point of contact within the department should you experience any problems. Many years ago, tutors stood in loco parentis to their students, but ever since the government obligingly lowered the age of majority to eighteen, students have been assumed to be adults and are held to be responsible for their own moral safety. Older members of staff like myself, however, for whom obsolete ideas die hard, still feel a certain obligation to pry in the interests of our tutees’ welfare. May I enquire whether you are a sufferer from the complaint known as anorexia nervosa?'
'No,’ I said, startled by the question although it was by no means the first time I'd been asked. ‘I'm just thin.'
'I'm glad to hear it,’ he said. ‘Although I suppose I shouldn't be entirely content with such an answer, given that one of the symptoms of the disease is rumoured to be a reluctance to admit to suffering from it. I don't mean to imply that you are in any way dishonest, but I do feel obliged to mention that were you, in fact, to be suffering from any such disorder, you would be unable to rely on me to interfere with its course. I could not claim to understand or sympathize with a desire on your part to starve yourself, but as an old-fashioned liberal I would defend to the death—anyone's death—your right to do so.'
What could I say to that? I was eighteen years old, away from home for the first time, utterly intimidated, and out of my depth. I just blushed and wished that I were somewhere else. Dr Gray scared me. He was uncontrollable. He could say what he liked, and he had a licence to be clever at my expense. I wasn't sure he actually cared whether I was anorexic or not.
I wasn't. I was just thin.
Things didn't seem to be getting any easier when I was introduced, a little later, to the other two members of my tutorial group, in whose company I would have to face Dr Gray once a week, so that he could discuss our essays with us. One was a boy named Daniel Calvert, who was trying to grow a beard and not having much luck with it; he seemed bright and rather argumentative, but easily flustered and confused. His manner veered from awkward aggression to defensive sullenness and back again with bewildering rapidity as Dr Gray smoothly tied him in knots. The other was a rather plain and stout mature student in her late twenties, named Cynthia Leigh. She wore a gay pride badge which featured two overlapping white circles with pendant crosses. She was discreet enough not to try to be clever, and thus avoided the more sarcastic edge of Dr Gray's tongue, but he seemed slightly pained when she made a point of informing us all that she was a single parent and that she hoped he would bear in mind the occasional difficulties that might arise from her situation.
We all listened politely while Dr Gray tried to explain to us that his job was not to tell us the truth, but merely to challenge whatever beliefs we happened to have or to adopt, in order to subject them to a proper trial by ordeal. I didn't understand. I simply assumed, on the basis of common sense and past experience, that what a teacher was supposed to do was to tell you the truth and explain it carefully, so that you'd know why it was true. Even though I did know—in spite of Dr Gray's fears—that much of philosophy had to do with trying to decide what the word ‘truth’ actually meant and what ‘an explanation’ actually was, I was still slow to understand that Dr Gray's method of teaching really was teaching, and not cruel mockery.
In time, I began to see why it all made sense, and that Dr Gray wasn't quite the ogre that he seemed, but after that first dismal introductory session I went back to my room convinced that I had made a dreadful mistake, and that I was not cut out for university at all.
The freshers’ dance was that evening. I wasn't sure that I ought to go. One of Mum's many warnings had concerned the number of older boys who would be avid for every opportunity to take advantage of me, and who would regard the dance as a kind of meat-market. I knew that she was right, and that the darkness beyond the madly flashing strobe lights would be full of predators on
the lookout, all determined to score with some innocent new girl who would be carried away by the excitement of it all. On the other hand, I didn't want to be left out, and I didn't want to be a coward. Sharon, for one, would have been utterly contemptuous if I'd missed it—all the more so because the group that was playing was a minor gothic band called the Night Land who normally did the northern circuit. She'd seen them on one of her trips to Leeds.
I'd never been with Sharon on any of her outings, and I didn't really share her taste in music. Music was one of the things I'd always set aside, one of the things I didn't want to be interested in. That might have had something to do with Sharon's enthusiasm. I always bought her a tape for Christmas and her birthday, and she always took care to ask me to get her the one she really wanted. Mostly she played them to herself, using her Walkman so as not to disturb Mum and Dad, but during the summer holidays, when we were both at home, she'd use Dad's midi system whenever Mum was out shopping, playing her favourites at full blast. She said that was the only way to hear them properly—to fill the room with sound and let the drumbeat resonate your ribcage. This summer's favourite had been Vision Thing by the Sisters of Mercy. Last summer's—that was before she'd become a dedicated goth—had been Stay Sick by the Cramps. I could still hum most of the choruses from both records; they'd seeped into my consciousness. In future years, I thought, I'd still be able to remember those summers every time I heard any track off the relevant tape.
I knew that I had to go to the dance, for Sharon's sake. It would be something to connect us.
I went with a group of girls who lived on the same corridor in Brennan Hall. The girl who lived next door to me was called Karen, and though she was very friendly she seemed very different from me. She told me that she'd never been north of Watford, and though she was only being flippant I felt put down. Everybody else I met seemed to be from the south too; I felt like an outsider, and was suddenly self-conscious about my accent. The other girls and I didn't have much chance to get to know one another once we were at the dance, because the pauses in between the music weren't long enough to fit in more than a couple of questions and answers. Over the course of the evening the group dissolved by slow degrees as its members were picked off by the predators. I felt slightly hurt that I was nearly the last to be targeted.
I knew, and understood perfectly well, that meeting Gil was just a freak of random chance. There was a sense, to be sure, in which he selected me: he saw, he found me acceptable, he moved in—but I could have been anyone, really. Anyone not too sour of face. It didn't even matter that I was averagely pretty, and not fat; he didn't look at me and ask himself, ‘Is she beautiful?’ he looked at me and asked himself, ‘Is she the type to spread her legs?’ If he'd been certain that I would let him screw me, it wouldn't have mattered if I'd had a paper bag over my head and twenty pounds of lard on my hips. I knew that even then, but there wasn't anything I could do about it. It was, as Dad would have said, the way of the world.
Not that there was anything wrong with Gil. He was better than anything I could reasonably have expected. He was tall, handsome and a lot older than most of the boys skulking in the shadows. He was mature and self-assured, and his accent was even more exotic than mine. Sharon would have said that I was lucky, and she'd have been right. In spite of everything, she'd have been right.
Right from the beginning, he pressured me—literally pressured me. The dance floor was crowded, its margins even more so. Circumstances licensed his pushing up against me, thigh to thigh, hand to arm. I didn't like his touching me, at first—I'd never liked being touched, and ours wasn't a very physical family—but I knew I'd have to get used to it, if I was going to go to bed with him. And I was. Not right away, but eventually. From the very beginning, I knew that.
When temporary quietness gave him his chance, the first thing he said was: ‘You look lost.'
'Not as lost as you sound,’ I said, trying desperately to figure out which way was west. ‘I think America's over there.’ He grinned, not so much at the joke as at the pleasure of having his accent recognised. He was proud of being an American.
'What's your name?’ he asked.
'Anne Charet.'
'Is that French?'
'No. I'm from Yorkshire. Near Sheffield.'
'I think this band's from Yorkshire. Are they what you'd call a gothic band?'
'Yes. My sister saw them play once. She's got all the gear—black jacket, black jeans, black hair.’ I pointed to the place by the stage where the few goths in the audience had congregated. There were only half a dozen, and I think they'd come in from off-campus. I couldn't believe that there'd be any goths among the students. He looked at them vaguely, but he wasn't really interested
'I'm Gil Molari,’ he said.
'Is that Italian?'
'No—not any more, anyhow. I'm from California, a small town south of LA. Are you new here?'
'Yes.'
'Me too. I'm a postgrad, doing research in psychology. Where d'you live?'
'Brennan Hall.'
'I've got a flat on some kind of off-campus estate. It's run by something called a housing association, but it's all university people—staff, technicians, postgrads. D'you want a drink?'
He only just managed to get the last question in before the music started again. I had to answer with a nod.
He grinned when I accepted the drink. It was supposed to be a friendly smile, but it showed that he couldn't suppress his satisfaction at the thought that I'd taken the first step on the slippery slope.
I let him pay for the drink—and the others. It was what he seemed to expect, though I don't suppose a local boy would have done. We didn't dance much. Being American, he didn't really know what a gothic band was, and tried to make a joke of it.
'The lead singer does look a bit like Frankenstein's monster,’ he said, inaccurately, when there was further space for talk. He didn't listen to what I said in reply. I suppose he figured that we could talk any old time, once the vital business of the night was out of the way.
He was so transparent that he might as well have come straight out with ‘Your place or mine?’ or ‘How about it?’ but he figured that he ought to be subtle, to creep up on me, to pressure me inch by inch. He was ready to fail, though—he was by no means certain then that he would make enough progress to make the eventual end inevitable, a week or a month later. He just kept making hopeful contact, one nudge at a time, one grope at a time, one question or tawdry joke at a time.
'You're not anorexic, are you?'
'No, just thin.'
'Do you want another drink?'
'All right.'
'Is this your first time away from home?'
'Yes—is it yours?'
'Hell, no. What d'you think of the campus?'
'The old part of it's nice. My tutor's office is in one of the oldest buildings—Wombwell House.'
'I saw it—weird place. Nothing like that on our campuses back home. My lab's over this side, in the newest building of all. I'll feel at home there all right. What's a tutor do?'
'Teaches tutorials. At Oxford or Cambridge every student has individual tutorials, I think. Here, we have groups of three or four. We have to do an essay every week, and we discuss them with our tutors. We have lectures as well, of course.'
'It's different back home. The classes are much bigger, even when you're a postgrad. Here, there's just me and my supervisor—and the test tubes.'
'Test tubes? I thought you were a psychologist.'
'Not a couch potato, a hands-on psychologist. Brain chemistry. Very messy. Some animal work—rats, rabbits, cats—but mostly tissue-culture stuff, electrophoresis and chromatography. D'you want another drink?'
And so on. Just a series of sound bites, squeezed between the band's pauses.
When he walked me home, the pressure intensified. He put his arm round me, as though to protect me from the creatures of the night, staking his claim so that any freaks and rapists waiting in the bushes would
know that they had to stay away.
It was a fairly long walk. The Students’ Union was in the corner of the campus furthest away from Brennan Hall, near the main road into the city. We had to pass between the various sets of science labs, and the buildings which housed the main lecture halls. A lot of the rooms in the science labs were still lit up inside, even though it was past midnight. Some were always lit up, even when they were empty, shining through the darkest night like beacons, because their blinds were never drawn. Beyond them, there was an area of near-Stygian gloom, which included Wombwell House and the little wood known as the Marquis of Membury's Garden.
Gil kissed me for the first time—wetly, weakly—on the bridge over the stream, and with that kiss we sealed our tacit compact, although he knew well enough that it wasn't going any further that night. As we passed from the part of the campus to which he belonged to the part to which I belonged, past the hulking shadow of Wombwell House—behind whose curtained windows not a single bright light blazed—and back on to the concrete path which led to Brennan Hall, we were already committed to one another: not just to one forgettable screw (he was too honourable a man for that) but to an evolving relationship of a perfectly ordinary kind.
I was more pleased with that assumed commitment than with anything else that had happened that day, or anything else that happened in the week which followed. I didn't really expect very much from the relationship, but I was content with it.
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