The Reading Party

by Fenella Gentleman

  ‘You don’t have to have any.’ Gloria said. She finished separating the segments of orange and held the plate in front of Rupert. He shook his head.

  ‘No. Pass it on, Rupe.’

  There was a moment’s hesitation. Then he took the plate and held it out to Jim. ‘Peace offering. No offence meant.’

  Jim ignored him.

  Tyler handed the plate on down the table.

  ‘Come on, Jim,’ Martin sucked at his piece of orange and, mouth full of flesh, continued. ‘He’s just being a jerk – they get a bit up themselves in the Manchester suburbs.’ And off he went on some madcap story about a trip he’d made to see Man United at Old Trafford, liberally laced with innuendo and the accompanying winks – Martin was always winking. It was just enough to cool things down.

  Soon pudding arrived to defuse any residual tension. Tyler had made pecan pie, a feat I’d like to have watched but had completely missed. Now he circled the table with Chloe to show off his handiwork, face beaming.

  ‘No shitty behaviour,’ she said, putting the dish down and jabbing in Jim and Rupert’s direction with a spatula, ‘or you won’t get any of Tyler’s dinner-party special.’

  She started working out how to cut it into enough portions, pausing to consult with her knife at different angles. ‘Oh shucks! Isn’t that what you Yankees say? I’ll just divide into sixteen: whoever’s nicest to me can share the last two.’

  As we picked up our spoons Tyler lobbed in something about ‘Yankee’ not being the right expression, given the composition of the Federal Army in the Civil War. ‘Now here’s something on which I do have an opinion. Want to know what it is?’

  He may have meant to divert, but most people weren’t listening and Eddie, who clearly had heard, was waving both arms in a theatrical ‘No!’ Even I preferred to focus on Tyler’s pudding and the clotted cream – respite from the drama. A misjudgement then, but a minor one and hardly his fault; the visceral nature of our industrial relations might have seemed as impenetrable as that business with the chocolates in the SCR. A bit of an egghead, then, but I found myself wanting to ruffle his hair.

  Gradually conversation shifted to the choice of the evening game, with murder in the dark or sardines still the strongest contenders. Somewhere along the way, sardines emerged the winner. Perhaps a game with both aggressor and victim would have been too close to the mark for the students, Jim and Rupert still too unpredictable. And I was relieved too. I wasn’t sure what would be worse – to have to ‘kill’ Loxton, or be ‘killed’ by him. It was hard enough maintaining any authority as it was – no need for additional complications.

  But Loxton declared himself hors de combat. Watching him settling down to read by the stove as if voices had never been raised, I wondered whether there had been such rows before – rows about religion or politics that threatened to get personal. He’d made no mention of them when we touched on the areas to watch – it had all been about keeping to the rhythm of study. The same was true of the evening entertainment – he’d said nothing much about what the students got up to or what he was prepared to countenance, just implied it was all very tame. In fact, come to think of it, there’d been no intimation at all of the day-to-day ups and downs, the ceaseless ebb and flow of the week, the possible need to intervene. It was as if emotions didn’t exist.

  Nearly two days since we’d last checked in with each other and I had no idea whether he thought matters were getting out of hand or happily easing from our tentative start. What, not to put too fine a point on it, did Loxton think about anything? Rupert might claim to have no view on this or that; the trouble with Loxton was that you knew he had a view but you didn’t know what it was. He was as bad as Tyler.

  As to what Loxton felt, that was anyone’s guess. It was that habit of secrecy again. No wonder he was on his own; nobody could live with that.

  Sardines in a house that size and with that many people would take ages – that much was clear before we could even begin.

  Hugh and I went to turn the bulk of the lights off: my idea, to make it more fun. ‘Trust you to be racy,’ he said. We started at the top and came speedily down – he doing one side of the hall, me doing the other. I was amused to see the state of some of the bedrooms. Tyler’s room was orderly but comfortable on his side – smart clothes slung casually over the chair, a peep of white boxers just visible – whereas Rupert’s side mixed fussy folding with laziness of the kind that made Mum say, ‘Don’t expect me to tidy up after you!’ Loxton appeared a bit anal: personal paraphernalia marched across his bedside table, all the relationships orthogonal.

  What would anyone make of my space, with its carefree disregard for cupboards and drawers, were they to hide there? I should have tidied as we passed by.

  By the time we got back to the kitchen they were on the last track of the Elton John album, the washing-up was done, and too many helpers were fussing around with damp towels finishing the drying. Martin explained the rules to Tyler, who said he’d never played, not having any siblings, which seemed rather sad, and there was brief discussion of how many we needed to count to for the hider to get about. Meanwhile Eddie produced a pack of cards and assembled a single suit: whoever drew the ace had to start. Loxton agreed to hold the fan and police the counting, and we gathered at the end of the kitchen table to take our pick. It was Priyam who was sent off. She would hide easily, we agreed, and the countdown was brisk.

  ‘Ninety-nine, a hundred!’ And with comic levels of squealing and jostling we were let loose.

  You’d be surprised how unnerving it can be in the dark, with so many people disappearing goodness knows where and you wondering what they’re up to: I was relieved to hear the giveaway sniggers. There, in one of the bathrooms on the first floor, were Priyam and Tyler, crouched in the white of the tub, a third figure on the lid of the loo, two more by the sink, everyone trying not to laugh, because then the others would too. We waited briefly for the rest of the party to join us, making more and more noise with each arrival. Eddie was the last to find us, just after Rupert. They were pretty bad tempered, given that it was just a game, but then those two seemed to get under each other’s skin.

  By the second round we’d got the hang of things and began winding each other up. On the ground floor people were feeling their way around, rattling the curtain rods as they checked the window seats, making a drama of peering behind the larger pieces of furniture. There were lots of outstretched hands and ill-suppressed giggles, as if we were combining hide and seek with blind man’s buff. I did my own bits of mock feeling-up, but failed to chance upon anyone interesting; as for myself, only once did I think a touch might be him – when a hand slid onto my waist from behind, making me spin round – but the shape in the darkness was too bulky and the groping too theatrical: it was only Martin.

  Mei’s hiding place was a bit odd: she must have forgotten how large the rest of us were. By the time I found them all, the door to Martin’s cubbyhole would hardly open. How galling to be the last to arrive when they were on my own floor!

  Back we all went to the kitchen. Loxton gave me no time to think – started the counting straight away, as if purposefully making it difficult. I set off up the back stairs – no point choosing the ground floor when the best place had already been taken. Without thinking, on reaching the landing I started up the little flight to my own comfort zone, and then changed my mind and came down again. We’d just been there – go somewhere else. Then hesitation. Where to go? We’d already done a bathroom, so that was out. I ran through the space occupied by the girls – too open; then through Tyler and Rupert’s – didn’t feel right. I thought about the housekeeper’s suite, but they would hear my footsteps from the kitchen. Across to the other room at the front, forgetting that that was Loxton’s. Round to the bathroom door. Damn, locked from the other side! I could hear people coming up the stairs. A quick glance. No way out: the door opened onto the hall. Behind the door? No: the white glare of papers on a bureau – we couldn’t distu
rb his papers. Between the bed and the wardrobe? A nightstand with enamel box and photo frames: they’d get knocked, the pills would spill and the silver would dent. Beyond it on the floor? Perhaps.

  Steps! I had to act. Scramble oh-so-fast onto the bed. Lift the blanket. Lie crossways. Face the ceiling. Pull blanket over. Shut eyes.

  Why did I shut my eyes?

  Blink. Honeycomb weave, fuzzing. Satin edging, tickling. Smell of wool, overpowering, like being buried in sheep – ugghhh.

  Whoever pushed at the door didn’t look hard enough. The steps went elsewhere.

  A different panic. Shoes still on: stupid! On Loxton’s bed, of all places! And they’d all pile in. He’d be horrified.

  Space needed – wriggle along. Pillows toppling – push them back.

  Tyler was the first to find me. Why did it have to be Tyler?

  ‘Nice one,’ he was saying. ‘Nice’ what? Nice to hide in that room? Nice to be in a bed? Nice to find me alone?

  I could hear him slipping off his shoes, those American loafers that no one else wore. Why did his shoes have to come off so fast?

  He was clambering on, making the mattress dip, the bed rock. This was too much – what if someone came in?

  No air. Raise the blanket. Breathe deep. Stay calm. Pretend.

  That supple body next to me – all wrong. Clothed from top to toe. Contact in stupid places. Conversation impossible.

  Somebody at the door. Stiffen; clench.

  Footsteps; prodding.

  ‘Found you!’ Hugh: he would be spindly.

  Mattress tipping. Blanket sliding. Springs complaining.

  Whispers: Priyam and Mei. Both small.

  A sagging and a rolling into him – the give of muscle, that smell of almond.

  Scuffling at the door. A voice saying, ‘Trust her to choose his room!’ A return guffaw: Gloria with Martin, someone else behind. Who was the someone else?

  ‘Underneath, underneath! We have to crawl under the bed.’ Lyndsey.

  More scuffling. Giggles. Breathing.

  Tyler’s body, scorching; pillows flopping, cool.

  Legs passing my head, sidling down the bed.

  ‘Any space? I’m not lying next to Rupert.’ Jim, gruff.

  Blanket lifted: better.

  More dipping and rocking; shoving too.

  Creaks. Whispers. A spring pinging. Laughter. ‘Shhhhhh!’

  ‘Will it hold?’ Was that me?

  ‘Sure thing.’

  ‘Got enough room?’ Inane question.

  ‘I’m good. You?’

  ‘Smothered by pillows!’ Not quite true.

  Gradually the rest of them arrived, Eddie – now cheery again – keeping tally.

  And then, pandemonium when Chloe found us and pulled the blanket off. ‘Fuck a duck!’ she said, and started tickling. In seconds, everyone was squirming and squealing; the bed felt like a bucking horse.

  All too short a wait for them to calm down and get up.

  Tyler whispered, ‘All over!’

  I gave a return squeeze of his arm, which I hadn’t been aware of holding. Then we eased our bodies apart.

  The students returned to the kitchen and dawdled there, exhausted by the excitement. As soon as I could, I slipped out. Loxton was right – it was better not to get involved, easier not to be pulled in both directions. Another case of learning lessons the hard way.

  If he’d still been around, I’d have apologised for invading his bedroom, but he’d disappeared. Instead there was a fuzz of light at the base of his door, which was now firmly shut. I nearly knocked but couldn’t imagine poking my head inside, chit-chatting about the things in his room, and Loxton certainly wouldn’t want to be discovered in his pyjamas. Probably he wore a dressing gown too, paisley-patterned with piping round the collar, like my uncle’s. I didn’t care to find out.

  Back in my attic I leant against the wood of the door to hear the silence, staring at the private space that, judging from the rucks in a rug now lying skew-whiff, must have been trampled through. The skin on my cheeks went tight where a few light tears – of frustration, dismay, I know not what – had trickled down. I must have undressed eventually, but it didn’t register. There was just a blankness tempered by an occasional blur of anxiety about Loxton or a flash of something much worse, connected with Tyler – his comment ‘I’m good’, which might have been heard; that hand on his arm, which might have been seen – and what you did or didn’t do. It took me an age to get to sleep, listening to the to-ing and fro-ing in the hall and on the stairs – hushed whisperings and suppressed giggles continued well into the night – wondering in whose direction the steps were going. Why it should have bothered me so much, I don’t know; there were always students creeping around my staircase in College, muffling their voices until they thought they were out of earshot. It wasn’t as if it was a surprise.

  Friday

  There are days when you want to wake early and days when you don’t. That day, it would have been good to be in a rush, to have no time to think. No such luck. Before I’d even opened my eyes, I was wondering about puffiness – whether the tears would show. Before I’d moved even a fraction, I was replaying every second of the scene in Loxton’s room.

  After a while I braced myself for cold, reached for the curtains above my head and pulled them aside. The bright blue of a clear sky made no difference. Round and round I went on the same track, one minute elated, the next collapsing into gloom.

  Leaning on the cold porcelain of the sink as water rinsed away the toothpaste, I stared at the person in the mirror, the rash of freckles, the unkempt hair. Sitting on the loo, confronted by proud boobs, taut thighs and small knees, I pondered the shape before me. Where had she come from, this woman? Where was this body dragging me?

  Back in bed with my paperback, I tried to wean myself off the loop of film. It didn’t work. In fact, these clips were almost worse than before, more incriminating than the scenes in the lane, by the bonfire and on the beach. The new ones were of ‘ordinary’ things – like our exchange about the portraits in the hall, the grin he gave when he served up his pudding, the spark when I teased about the mess in his room – and all had assumed extraordinary potency. They went right the way back, every pinprick of pleasure remorselessly exposed, past the walk from Magdalen Bridge and the meetings in the Lodge to the fateful collision before the start of the first term. At what point had the crucial shift taken place or had there always been something? How did you extract yourself when you were so drawn? He was out of bounds.

  Perhaps it was just as well that Priyam came to the door, though it was a surprise, two days running; usually she was with Mei, who liked our floor.

  ‘Are you up, Dr Addleshaw?’ No more than a fractional pause. ‘May I ask you something?’

  Ah, that was why she’d visited the day before.

  ‘Of course. Come right in.’

  She appeared in her Viyella nightdress, looking small.

  I thought of myself, dishevelled. ‘Don’t look too hard, I’m only half dressed.’

  ‘Me too. Gloria’s bagged the bath again.’

  ‘And? Is everything okay?

  She didn’t reply.

  ‘Would you like to talk about it?’

  She sat on the edge of the bed, making the springs ping as Loxton’s had the night before, and then, with a ‘May I?’, swivelled round on the shiny quilt to lean against the clothes draped over the frame at the foot. She didn’t look comfortable, so I passed the spare pillows and watched as she created a better support, bent her knees and tucked her nightdress under those delicate toes. She had most of the light behind her, so it was hard to see, but under her dark skin she looked wan.

  It turned out that Priyam had slept badly too, fretting about her mother’s birthday, which fell the following day. The problem may have been Finals, but she didn’t mention that so neither did I; instead she talked about family and letting people down. Gradually it all spilled out. Everybody would be there – cous
ins, second cousins, distant uncles and aunts. Her mother hadn’t complained and her father never expressed a view on such things, but they’d done so much – how could she have been so selfish? She piled it on further, saying it was all very well for her sister, who looked out for herself, had boyfriends, went her own way. Priyam preferred to maintain common ground, observe the traditions. She’d made a mistake: she should never have come. She should have gone back as normal and studied at home, like everyone else.

  I shifted at my end of the bed and the silky top layer started to slip. ‘Here,’ I said, pulling it back from the floor. ‘Put your legs underneath. They’ll be warmer.’

  So she slid the quilt from underneath her, lifted it up and reassembled it around her, her legs now stretching down by the side of mine but running in the opposite direction. If it weren’t for the rest of the bedding, our shins would have touched.

  Maybe that bit of companionship turned her thoughts, because she began talking about her reading and why the week had been special. It seemed she’d ploughed her way through a volume of tort and had only fifty pages to go. That was more than she’d hoped for, but that wasn’t the only reason why Carreck Loose had been important. It was all that we’d shared together, students and dons alike: the conversations and the walks, the games and doing the crossword; even the washing-up had been fun with the stereo at full tilt in the background.

  ‘Surely your parents will understand,’ I suggested, thinking of my own. ‘They’ll be pleased for you, and proud.’

  She sat silent for a few moments, picking at a loose thread in the stitching of the eiderdown. Then suddenly she dipped her head and her shoulders curled forward as she disintegrated into tears. It was all too much, she said into her lap. Everybody wanted something from her – family, friends, tutors – and there weren’t enough bits to go round. Sometimes she felt as if she was getting smaller and smaller, now a mere slip of a thing who might disappear through a crack in the floorboard like the one in her room in College that gaped as you walked towards the window. Even here there’d been moments when she felt herself shrinking. They were all so clever and witty, they knew about so many things. She was like Mei – she knew about her subject, because she’d worked hard, but she didn’t know how to do the other stuff. Whereas Rupert and Eddie, even Lyndsey, in her oddball way …