Of course Ben was practically there already. He couldn’t help it – his suit looked like he’d picked it out blindfold in the Debenhams January sale.
‘This seems to be Law Firm Alley,’ said Charlie. ‘You into any of this? See yourself as a lawyer?’
‘Well, I did like Ally McBeal. I’m not sure that counts.’
‘Coming up for Management Consultancy Lane. Why not chat to someone here? It’ll be good practice.’
They lingered on the edge of a conversation between a curly-haired blonde representative and a stubbly guy in a pinstriped suit. She was reassuring him that his degree subject was completely irrelevant. ‘Listen, it doesn’t matter what you’ve done at Undergraduate. Mine was in Biology – no use to anyone!’
The candidate laughed dutifully, while Ben and Charlie smiled along on the sidelines.
‘What really matters,’ the blonde woman went on, ‘is leadership potential, an analytic mind and the desire to make a difference.’
Charlie pulled out his vibrating phone – Sara. He wasn’t sure he had the energy to support two people at once, and ten-thirty was early enough to claim he was asleep . . . but policy was policy. Charlie’s twenty-four-hour comfort line obeyed one simple rule: never initiate, always respond. It was a new service he was providing: victim support. (In this case, the victim was supported by the criminal but it didn’t affect the quality of care.) ‘Hey.’
‘Where are you? It’s loud!’
Pinstripe started in on his extra-curricular activities – articles for The Badger and charity fun runs. (The Badger was the inexplicably named uni paper, where future journalists practised fawning and rubbing people up the wrong way.) Charlie remembered Ben’s rugby tour gimp experience. That could definitely be dressed up – sports team rep? A natural motivator? A selfless team player?
‘Careers Fair.’
‘Oh!’
Charlie moved off to the retail zone to observe Ben from a distance. ‘How are you doing?’
‘Not great to be honest.’
‘Oh dear.’
Miraculously, Ben seemed to have piped up, saving himself from slinking away unacknowledged. Charlie gave him a thumbs up.
‘I didn’t sleep again. You’re really at the Careers Fair?’
‘Yeah.’ Charlie tried not to sound too cheerful. At first, whenever they’d spoken, the sound of her voice had activated his latent feelings of loss and sadness. Now though, it was getting more difficult to tune in to her downbeat mood. ‘Ben wanted to come.’
‘Hm.’
‘What?’
‘. . . Nothing.’
‘Come on, I know that tone. Better out than in.’ Charlie started wandering up and down a corridor of big retailers, launching then abandoning imaginary careers at ASOS and John Lewis, and collecting USB sticks.
‘It’s just that I was always asking you to come to that kind of thing with me and you said it was pointless. I actually saw it was on and considered going and remembered what you’d said . . . Anyway, it doesn’t matter, I didn’t call for an argument.’
Charlie didn’t really see why he should be held responsible for things Sara imagined him saying, but said, placatingly, ‘Who cares what I think anyway? You should do whatever you want.’ He peeped through the banners to see Ben taking an armful of freebies from the management consultancy stall. Ben would make a great employee, Charlie reflected – he was kind, he gave a shit, he was even quite hard-working when galvanised. It was strange that in order to find a Ben, companies had to put potential Bens through all this painful entrepreneurial stuff – all this flesh pressing and chat about innovating – when surely all they really wanted was someone who could do what they were told?
‘Yeah, I know,’ said Sara. ‘Can I tell you my worry?’
‘Of course.’
‘I’m worried about whether or not to go to the Safer Sex Ball.’
‘That’s ages away, isn’t it?’
‘It’s also Matt’s birthday and everyone’s going and they’re buying tickets now.’
‘Okay.’ The question of if and when they would see each other had been hanging in the air for some time. Charlie thought he’d managed to skirt around Sara’s proposals, neither rejecting them outright nor making any moves to make it happen. Of course he wanted to see her, but what good would it do? They’d get an hour of comfort before having to split up all over again. But they were bound to bump into each other sooner or later, and then they’d have to go through all that angst before a public audience. ‘And do you want to go?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t want to miss out because of all this.’
‘Okay. Well . . . you should go if you want to.’
‘You don’t want me to go.’
‘No . . .’
‘I can tell by your voice!’
‘Well, I just feel like—’
‘You want the whole of uni to yourself so you can go round pulling other girls without feeling bad.’
Charlie just managed to stop himself swearing that wasn’t true. He knew what would happen if he promised – he’d be bound by his ‘good bloke’ oath, and end up with neither the relationship, nor the fun he’d ended the relationship to have. He swallowed, suddenly nervous. ‘I want to be honest with you, okay. And being honest, I can’t promise that nothing will happen at SSB.’
‘Oh great.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Right.’
‘I am sorry, Sara.’
During the gaping pause that followed, Charlie walked further down the corridor, trying to collect his thoughts. He found himself in front of a poster tacked up on a piece of blue partition:
WANTED
DO-ERS, GO-GETTERS, MONEY-MAKERS
‘Charlie?’
‘I’m still here. Are you okay?’
‘Not really, but I suppose I better go. I only called because I missed you. Bye.’ Without waiting for a response, she hung up.
‘Caught your interest?’
Charlie snapped out of his daze. An alert pair of eyes switched from a BlackBerry to him, with a look that declared: You have my expert attention.
‘Um, sure,’ said Charlie. ‘Why, are you involved in it?’
The guy was young, but not so young as to make a conversation seem pointless. Short and broad-shouldered, he had slicked-back hair and a pink shirt with no jacket – a respectable middle ground on the suit question.
‘Let me give you a bit of advice.’ He tucked his phone into his breast pocket. ‘Don’t answer questions with “Sure”. It doesn’t sound professional.’
Charlie resisted the impulse to say ‘Sure.’ ‘Understood,’ he nodded. It was one of Charlie’s strengths that he wasn’t always itching to prove he was the alpha – if this guy wanted to sit at the head of the table and carve the beef, he could carve the beef. ‘I’m Charlie.’ He extended a hand.
‘Arthur.’ Arthur shook it like he meant it. ‘What do you want to do, Charlie?’
‘Well.’ Charlie arranged his thoughts. ‘I’m interested in setting up my own business, and according to this poster, there’s a university seed-funding scheme. Are you involved?’
‘I’m not, but I worked with a start-up that won a similar scheme when I first graduated. Do you have a co-founder?’
Co-founder? For a second, Charlie was derailed by quite how vague his plans were, but he managed to quell his doubts in time to reply, ‘Not as yet. Is that a drawback?’
‘I happen to know on that scheme they rejected individual applications in the first cut. So I’d recommend you find a co-founder. Do you want some advice?’
Charlie had the feeling he was going to get it. ‘Certainly.’
Arthur leaned one hand on the table as if he were presenting the casual segment of the news. ‘Think of the person that you’d least like as your competitor, and ask them.’
Instantly, Charlie thought of Taz. He was bound to be all over this competition – he’d have been masterminding his entry while Charlie was attending his
first freshers’ foam party. If Charlie were a real entrepreneur, of course, that thought wouldn’t bother him – he’d tell himself he was unencumbered by business experience and the red tape of the Entrepreneurial Society and his fresh approach was in fact his greatest asset.
‘Are you looking for part-time work?’ Arthur asked confrontationally, practically winding Charlie with opportunity.
It was impossible to say no. Before he’d left the stall, Charlie had taken Arthur’s card, described himself as ‘innovative, decisive and passionate’ in an application form for a post as a Student Brand Ambassador, and declared in writing his (non-existent) interest in taking part in flagship promotions before finals. He had to admit he was pretty impressed by Arthur. If Charlie could sell Social Tiger like that, there’d be no stopping him.
He found Ben standing at the back of a crowd watching an energetic, balding fifty-something wearing a headset mic. Behind him a banner proclaimed ‘Talent Transitions’ in off-looking red Times New Roman.
‘Never use a font the average person could name,’ Charlie murmured to Ben. ‘Any idiot could tell you that.’
‘It’s about how you present yourself,’ Mic boomed. ‘If you ring up and sound like a piece of wet lettuce, you’ll get a quick rejection. It’s all about making rapport, influencing people.’ He raised his eyebrows in a cunning aside to the front row. ‘Do you know what can improve a woman’s chances of getting a job fivefold and a man’s threefold?’
The two girls immediately in front of him shared an embarrassed look.
‘Where’d you go?’ whispered Charlie.
‘Assessment centre.’ Ben’s face was practically caving in with the multiple worries impressed upon it. ‘God, this is bleak.’
‘I’m asking, does anybody know?’ Mic threw it out.
‘It’s a handshake,’ muttered Ben.
‘At the back. What’s your name?’
Charlie glanced to his right and saw a tall girl in a trouser suit, hand raised. ‘Is it a handshake?’
‘Exactly! Well done.’
Charlie gave Ben a ‘get you’ nudge. ‘You were right!’
Ben’s eyes bored into him like lasers of despair.
Skit successfully completed, Mic got back to business. ‘Now let’s talk CVs. A CV is not a shopping list. Ask yourself, What story am I telling? You have to create a personal narrative.’
‘Just kill me now.’
When political passions are roused, tedious administration is never far behind. They had spent an hour debating the exact wording of their vandalism. Then they had debated handwriting or printing (printing was more legible). Ellie had gone to Rymans, found stickers were pretty expensive, and instead bought some glue.
‘It’s bathos,’ Maria had helpfully commented, when the printing system went down. ‘The sublime to the ridiculous,’ she explained before adding, ‘I will have to revise pretty soon.’
‘Don’t talk about it,’ Ellie burst out, clapping her hands over her ears. ‘I’m asking you seriously, don’t.’
‘That’s it.’ Nadine slapped a hand on the printer table. ‘I’m issuing a fatwa. Revision talk is banned – by order of the Prophet Muhammed, peace be upon him.’
Finally, armed to the teeth with stationery, they ventured out onto campus and began systematically pasting slogans onto Safer Sex Ball posters.
One of the things people rarely mention about politics is how embarrassing it is. You don’t tend to read that Mrs Pankhurst felt like a twat every time she smashed a window or bombed a letterbox. Ellie couldn’t quite decide who she feared meeting most: it could be her dissertation supervisor (though she wasn’t sure Dr Longstaff would even recognise her), or one of several guys who had recently commented online that she was an insane bitch, or simply everyone she knew.
A group of girls streaming out of the Business faculty shot them looks that combined disgust and confusion in a perfect helix of contempt. A bunch of hockey team guys stopped in their tracks, weighed down by sporting equipment and bafflement.
‘What are you doing?’ one asked, as if she were urinating on the faculty steps.
Ellie felt a twang of irritation amid the drone of humiliation. She’d anticipated having to explain their actions (she’d even dreamed of bumping into Lucas and those guys and airing a few of her stronger opinions), but she hadn’t quite realised how stupid it would make her feel. ‘Protesting the objectification of women on campus,’ she replied, hating the questioning intonation that crept into her voice.
‘Obviously.’ As they turned to go, he exhaled his disbelief at the lengths to which crazies would go.
One professor with huge round glasses and tufty purple hair stood and watched while they pasted up a sign outside the Union, recently transformed into a gastro-pub with standard lamps and five pieces of soggy vegetable tempura (all carrot) for £4.95. Eventually, she gave a one-sided smile and a single nod, before bobbing away, a dot of violet against the grey.
Maria wasn’t completely getting it.
‘What about that?’ She pointed to a Domino’s ad featuring a white-toothed gang of Americans tumbling artfully onto a sofa. ‘That’s annoying. They shouldn’t even be allowed to monopolise advertising the way they do. Uni’s sold out.’
Maria was the other reasonable girl in Ellie’s second-year seminar group. She had bleach-blonde hair with a streak of blue, and big ambling shoulders that she shrugged a lot when she made a point. In their group, every question asked by the shy, quietly disappointed PhD student had met with brain-gnawing silence from ninety per cent of the participants. (‘Why do they bother coming?’ Ellie complained to Rose afterwards. ‘How can they stand saying nothing week after week?’) Maria could be relied upon to speak up and say something more or less coherent. But she wasn’t getting it at all.
‘Single issue,’ groaned Nadine. ‘You don’t have a message if you’re saying just anything, do you? Say one thing!’
Ellie tried to line up arguments in her head in case anyone else took issue, but as they headed through Library Square, no one paid them the slightest attention. The third years milling around the revolving door to the library had a ghostly air, taking up a fraction of their usual space – the rest of their person had floated off, pondering Locke or Laura Mulvey or . . . maths. All they were concerned about was hoovering up a packet of crisps or a white chocolate mocha and returning to the hive. Ellie couldn’t help feeling slightly relieved.
‘Yes, but.’ Maria got her discussion voice on. ‘If we say “Women Have Pubes”, don’t we ultimately end up looking like a bunch of pube fetishists who just want to see pubes?’
‘I wouldn’t mind seeing pubes,’ Ellie countered. ‘But I don’t think that’s the single message. It’s that campus culture is sexist and it makes it seem okay when uni posters objectify women like this.’
‘Mm,’ nodded Nadine. ‘Nice and clear.’
‘We want to say,’ Ellie launched, not quite sure where she was going, ‘You don’t have to put up with this. Why is this happening? This is bullshit. Looking at this will probably make you feel shit—’
‘It’s not only those posters though,’ Maria butted in. ‘It’s the whole commercialisation of uni. It’s capitalism.’
‘Single message!’ cried Nadine. ‘Pass me the glue. We’re not going to take down the capitalist system and do our finals on the side.’
‘It’s true though.’ Maria scraped her blue streak behind her ear. ‘We’re just attacking the symptom.’
Outside Arts Two, the posters were encased in glass. With some satisfaction, Ellie slapped a slogan on top and brushed glue over it, partly obscuring a poster for a burlesque version of Waiting for Godot. ‘You know what I’d like to vandalise? The magazines in the campus shop, about who’s fat and who’s flashed their vag. And that fucking wannabe Daily Mail columnist in The Badger.’
‘I won’t say it again. Okay, I will – single issue.’ Nadine added a final glue layer. ‘But that could be a good phase two.’
&
nbsp; ‘By Women Who Hate Women,’ Ellie spelled out in the air.
‘For Women Who Hate Themselves,’ Nadine added. ‘That’s fucking good!’
‘Let’s not get victim-blamey though,’ said Maria, meaningfully. ‘Remember who the real enemy is.’
A few scattered trees and some regimented bushes marked the point where campus stopped and the real world began. Out here by the Philosophy Department, the quiet campus roads rarely saw a car, making their painted lines and intersections feel like some kind of road-safety display. The absence of a corporate sponsor or big-hearted investment banker to donate a shiny glass-fronted building meant Philosophy was still in its boxy, concrete-legged 1960s form. Ellie had had her single meeting with Dr Longstaff there, in the Philosophy–Classics café: a bench next to a tea and coffee vending machine. At the thought of that meeting, in which she had waxed lyrical about Nietzsche and seemed completely in control of her material, Ellie felt a wave of anxiety that threatened to topple her over. With a deep wheezy breath, she tried to tell herself . . . But what was she even telling herself now? She couldn’t do the dissertation, it had been proven. That was that.
They stood on the paving below the faculty, next to one of the concrete pillars, and gazed up. Between two narrow windows that stretched right up to the floor above, there was a larger-than-life-sized SSB poster of the same girl, sprawled on her back with a danger sign Photoshopped behind her. Slightly twisted at the waist, she covered her breasts with one hand, and fingered her blonde hair with the other. Her skin was finished with a silky layer of correction, a strange combination of HD crispness and blurry erasure. Around her breasts and bikini bottoms, there were little blocks of peach, where the flesh colour hadn’t blended. Any suggestion of a nipple had been misted over like the faces on Crimewatch.
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